


Catch-23

by alSaqr



Series: The Exile [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon Compliant Original Jack Harkness, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, John Hart's sexuality, PTSD, Presumed Consent, Shower Sex, Strong Language, Unrequited Love, alcoholic character, mentions of past death, mentions of torture, wibbly wobbly timey wimey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 42,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28541067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alSaqr/pseuds/alSaqr
Summary: Years later, Captain Jack Harkness would listen to Professor River Song complain about meeting people in the wrong order and remember the time that it had nearly cost him the beginning of one of his strongest relationships.Or: The Redjay meets Captain Jack Harkness, and two Time Agents meet the Redjay.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/John Hart, Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones, Rodageitmososa/Captain Jack Harkness, Rodageitmososa/Wincinrondrometa, Toshiko Sato/Owen Harper
Series: The Exile [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/20309
Comments: 36
Kudos: 4





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is - by design - wibbly-wobbly. There are two overlapping plots, because the two "main characters" (Jack, and Roda) have a remarkable knack for not experiencing time in the correct order. So the two tales are set one year apart, from Roda's POV, but much further apart by Jack's.
> 
> ...imagine River Song and the Doctor. We have something like that, but neither character is as fussy about keeping a diary and making sure things happen 'right' as someone with a doctorate would be.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”_   
>  **― J.R.R. Tolkien, 'The Fellowship of the Ring'**

**CARDIFF, 2006**

First impressions, Captain Jack Harkness knew, like strip teases, had to be perfect. This one in particular.

She was a lot more bedraggled than the last time that they’d met, and Jack would wager less certain of themselves. _So the regeneration might’ve been recent. Should probably keep an eye on that._ At the very least, it was obvious that she had no goddamn idea what was going on, or where she was. Then again, having just been thrown through the Rift, that wasn’t exactly much of a surprise. She was a small woman, shorter than he’d remembered her to be. Olive skin, dark hair and brown eyes made her look perhaps Greek, or Middle Eastern. Her hair just passed her fringe and curled slightly in the damp from her fall in the river, and it almost looked as if it had been hacked shot shortly after regenerating. _Either that or Time Lords regenerate looking half-baked._ Whoever had cut her fringe - and he had a suspicion it had probably been done to herself - had made a right mess of it, as if all that had mattered to them was it not being in their eyes. There was a bruise underneath one eye, already healing to a plum-like shade of purple, and the faintest line of freckles that almost bled into her dark skin. In contrast her features were feminine; soft but worn. _Kind of cute, really._

Her body was young – she could have been in her mid twenties – but looking at her now Jack was struck by just how old she seemed to be. Old and tired.

“Where the Skaro am I…?”

He stepped out of the shadows, playing the same old confidence game that he always did. That was his role. It made a nice change that just this once, he knew more or less how things were supposed to play out. From the other side of a pane of glass thick enough and strong enough to stop a hoard of weevils, Jack raised his jaw high and folded his arms over his crisp, blue dress shirt and suspenders and tried not to smirk too much. With no small degree of reluctance, he’d had to agree to let Ianto take his greatcoat to the dry cleaners. _Suppose he has a point. God only knows what kind of things the Rift’s dropped in the Basin over the years._ Of course, he’d changed before coming down to the cells to take to their latest, uh, guest, and his hair was pretty much dry by now. They’d left her in her wet clothes, rather than risk alarming her, but there was an artefact they’d found in the vaults that had more or less dried her off while she was out cold. But he still looked smart, he knew. He’d been expecting this day to come for a long time, and now that he had, he was determined to make the absolute most of it. 

After all, it wasn’t often that you managed to get the upper hand on a Time Lord. Certain kind of thrill, really. It was a feeling he was going to savour for as long as possible.

“This is Torchwood, Roda.” As the prisoner across the cell narrowed his eyes at him, Jack’s smile only grew. “And this time, no lipstick.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You have the right to not much at all, really. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”_   
>  **― Derek Landy, 'Mortal Coil'**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so begins the flash forward, which is also a flashback. Without going into spoilers, this incident is in Roda's future (from her POV) and Jack's past (from his POV). Any scenes set in the 51st century are as such.

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, The 51st Century**

**_1 year later_ ** **_…_ **

It had been a long time since Rodageitmososa had looked down the barrel of a gun. _Not long enough, really._

The year (or so - she'd left the planet, a few times) working with Torchwood must’ve made her rusty. It was hard to stay in practice - to keep your instincts sharp - when the worst you had to deal with, most days, was a stray weevil or a blowfish on a bender. _There were those autons once_ _… but I’m still not convinced those weren’t a_ present _from someone._ But even when the Rift - or space, in general - threw out something with a little more clout, it was rarely more than she and Jack and whichever poor soul had been dragged outside of the Hub with them could manage. They rarely came home with much more in the way of injuries than a sprained ankle or maybe a cut or a bite that needed looked at and stitched up, but for all that Owen lacked in general people skills and bedside manner, he was a dab-hand with a needle and thread. _And not bad on the eyes,_ thought Roda, _when you have a little bit of blood loss._ (Mind you, it was clear to everyone that he and Tosh were dancing around admitting their feelings for one another. And so Owen Harper was off-bounds, which was good, because most of the time, Roda could happily have slapped him.) Whatever the case was, she had grown somewhat accustomed, since she’d been spending most of her time in the twenty first century, to _not_ having to look over her shoulder. Which was one reason her reflexes had failed her today. Metaphorically speaking. The gun had come from the front.

More importantly, however, was the fact that the person _pointing_ the gun at her face no longer registered in her mind as a threat. Raising her hands above her head, she tried to keep as straight a face as she could as she eyed up the smirking face of a man who would either shoot her or shag her, with probably very little else in between. Maybe. _Really,_ she supposed, putting up shields in her mind even while she stayed as still as she possibly could, _I don_ _’t know him yet at_ all. _Or he doesn_ _’t know me. But this must be the day he told me about…_

Time travel could be a nuisance, sometimes. Even when you knew something was coming.

Roda could only really _imagine_ the sort of trouble she was going to be in, once she got back to what she’d begun to think of as _her_ century. (Such a strange thing, for a Time Lord to settle down somewhere other than Gallifrey. But then, she wasn’t really a Time Lord, these days, in anything other than genetics. She hadn’t been one of her own kind since the day they’d exiled her.) It was meant to have been a quick trip. Land in the fifty-first century, steal a few useful things, hop over to a nearby system whose distress signal her TARDIS had picked up, and get back before Jack and the others even noticed that she was missing. (Time travel, though awkward, was also very good for flitting around without being noticed. Of course all of Torchwood were a little more attuned to temporal disturbances than the average human, but it was easy enough to fib a little bit, too. Or at least evade the questions.)

Ostensibly, she was supposed to have ‘settled’ now; joined the alien police, as it were. The more competent version of UNIT, Roda felt, considering that she’d never really managed to get on _their_ radar and when she’d once asked the Doctor, he’d admitted that she wasn’t even in their files before he brought her up as an anecdote back in his fifth body. Regardless, a good little Torchwood employee was _not_ supposed to run off and be a time-traveling vigilante. But Roda had never been one to follow the rules. Today, it was going to bite her. And Jack, when he was done giving her a lecture for slipping back into theft, was _never_ going to let her live it down.

“You don’t know me yet,” she guessed, raising an eyebrow slowly. _Her_ Jack had been vague on the details, wisely; but it meant she was going to have to work out if it _was_ the time he’d been talking about the old-fashioned way. “Do you, Jack?”

Captain Jack Harkness - friend, lover, colleague, Time Agent, and whatever he was to her, right this moment - raised an eyebrow right at her, and adjusted his grip on his pistol.

“Know you? Nah. But I know who you _are,_ Redjay.” He kept the gun trained on first her forehead then her temple as he walked closer, eyes trailing up her body like a glue stick. _So_ definitely _not Roda, yet._ “Wouldn’t mind _getting_ to know you, though.”

“Rassilon help me…” muttered Roda, ignoring the way that Jack’s face had broken into one of his familiar, wide grins. The sort she was so fond of, when it was _her_ Jack smiling them. “Do you _ever_ stop flirting?”

“With this body?” He laughed, and Roda resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. _No, I really want to keep them on that gun. That gun that_ _’s shot me_ before. “It wouldn’t be fair to keep it all to myself.”

 _No,_ sighed Roda, inwardly. _Somehow, I knew that was what you were going to say._

She gave an exasperated growl despite herself; not out of anger for what was going on, so much as in memory of the last time that she had met _this_ Jack. _The first time that I died._ When he had interrogated her, tried to get her to give him information that she still had no idea about, and then left her with the parting gift of a bullet in the back. _This Jack,_ she reminded herself, _is not your friend. Not yet._ This Jack might shoot her, right here, right now, and sleep easy about it. Although somehow, she didn’t think he would.

“You don’t recognize me.”

She tried to work out if this was the _incident_ that she had been told about, or a different sort of mistake all together, without invading his mind. It was... harder than she had expected it to be.

“Should I?”

“Well,” she said, as casually as she could manage, doing her best to let go of the growl. To steady the racing of her hearts, and the urge to run or to fight. _I don_ _’t want to hurt him…_ And either way, he was just doing his job. In that… typically flirtatious, sleazy-were-it-anyone-but-him kind of way. “You know my name.”

“Every agent in the Boeshane Peninsula knows your name, sweet-cheeks.”

Roda spluttered; both at the nickname, and the implication. Maybe her memory wasn’t what it used to be, but she was _sure_ that she hadn’t landed so close to the first (and last) time that she’d been in the area… both temporally, and the location. They were a long way from the centre, from the entertainment hubs and the tourist traps and most importantly, a very long way away from the Time Agency’s headquarters. She was in the outer Peninsula, on planets that didn’t even warrant brochures, and she’d assumed - falsely, so it would seem - that no one would be monitoring for her _here_.

She had also assumed that she was small fry, in the grand scale of the Agency’s business. Since she didn’t even know _what_ they had arrested her for the first time, it was hard to imagine that she warranted being known by ‘every agent’, but then, she _had_ added to the list, over the years. She made a mental note to avoid coming anywhere near it, if she made it out of her in one piece, for at least another couple of centuries _their_ time.

“Don’t push your luck, Jack.”

Already reaching into his back pocket, one hand froze as he looked at her with a strange expression on his face. “Jack…” He licked his lips. “You’ve called me that twice. Think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

“Yes - _no_ _…_ ” Roda rolled her eyes, itching to pinch the bridge of her nose but not wanting to make any sudden movements with her hands in case she got shot. “Let’s just say your reputation precedes you.”

“They could’ve at least got my name right,” pouted not-Jack, pulling handcuffs from his jeans. He pressed the barrel of his gun against her temple; cold and very pointed. “Hands where I can see ‘em.”

Roda sighed and waggled her fingers where they were still held up above her hearts. Fleetingly she wondered if he always carried around handcuffs, even when he wasn’t working, and then - trying not to blush - lifted her chin coolly. Reaching for her closest arm, Jack bent it backwards, tugging it not-that-gently behind her back and keeping it there with one hand around her wrist as he maneuvered the other into place. It always amazed her how well he could do that one-handed. _Last time he cuffed me - back at Torchwood - was a lot more fun_ , Roda thought to herself, testing the give on the first cuff and trying to decide how quickly she could break out of them, given the chance. It didn’t help matters much that pretty much anyone who met Jack, regardless of gender, species or marital status, tended to leave his company with some form of unresolved tension; be it sexual or violent. Despite her efforts Roda was more accustomed to the former; and a little of the latter, for fun. Not-Jack clicked her wrists together until they were too tight for her to wriggle the bones of her hands through them but not so tight that they cut off the circulation, and smacked her on the arse for good measure. Roda couldn’t help but jump and glared at him until she was sure he might catch fire.

“Got a nice ring to it, though.”

“What?”

“Jack.” He flashed his teeth, dragging the name out. He pulled on the cuffs, holstering his gun once he was sure she was secured. “I can be Jack if that does it for you.”

“Get me free of these cuffs,” said Roda, too sweetly, batting her eyelashes for good measure, “and I’ll show you _exactly_ what does it for me, Jack.”

“James,” said Jack. Roda blinked, caught off guard by the fact that he didn’t even _smile_ at the clumsy advance. _Damn Time Agents_ _…_ “Unless you’ve got a thing for Jacks, call me James.”

James. She was certain she was going to forget it in an instant.

“Not even a little interested?” She pretended to pout.

“Oh, I’m _very_ interested,” replied Jack, grinning ear to ear. “But pleasure after business, and all that.”

“You’ve read my file, Captain.”

“Not a Captain.”

Roda’s eyes darkened. “Do you really think there’ll be time after ‘business’?”

“I always make time for pleasure.”

Jack gave her a forceful push forward; not enough for her to lose her balance, but enough for her to start walking towards Rassilon only knew where, Roda sighed, wondering just how _well known_ she really was if a threat had absolutely no effect on him. Then again, this was Jack. _Time agent_ Jack. _fifty-first century_ Jack. A little danger was probably doing it for _him_ , too. And yet, despite her genuine fear of what the Time Agency would do to her, if they got her hands on her again, Roda couldn’t find it in her to be all that worried. _I_ _’m with Jack,_ said a little voice in the back of her mind. _Not my Jack, but Jack all the same. I_ _’m not scared of him; I can make something up, without messing up his timeline, if this_ really _goes sour._ If she had to, she could knock him out - even a Time Agent’s training was something that a Time Lord could work around - but it would give him a week-long migraine and she didn’t really want to have to hurt him unless she had no other option. Or make that much of a scene, quite yet. Nobody seemed to have noticed the arrest, and she was steadily realising that there had to be a perception filter around them; but if she made a racket, that would only work _so_ well.

“Of course you do, Captain,” she grumbled to herself, only a little fondly. _At least if that_ _’s_ true, _it_ _’ll give me a little… wiggle room._ “Where are we going?”

Jack patted his vortex manipulator, an irritated expression on his face. “Short trips only. I’m in the doghouse.” As he spoke, Jack pulled her up by the cuffs and spun her around, pressing his body up against her with the hand holding the cuffs resting against the small of her back. He pushed her hair out of her face - disheveled by the rough treatment - and when he next he spoke, his mouth was just inches from hers, and Roda had to stop herself from thinking about just how easy it would be to kiss him, while he was manhandling her like this. _And why the_ Skaro _am I enjoying this?_ “Didn’t peg you for a thing with uniforms, though.” Roda blinked, trying to ignore his breath against her ear, his chest against hers. “Captain this, Captain that. _But_ ,” as Roda opened her mouth despite herself, breathing heavier, he suddenly threw her over his shoulder while she was distracted. “Can’t say I _have_ read your file. You are a _hard_ woman to interrogate, so I'm told. Might get a second chance, though.”

 _The lost years._ Guilt stopped Roda from lashing out or trying to bite, but Jack had a firm grip on her, anyway. Guilt, and not a small measure of fear. She remembered that interrogation, even if he did not. Very, _very_ clearly. It wasn't something she particularly wanted to be on the receiving end of ever again.

Jack hefted her on his shoulder while she tried to think of something to say - tried to think if there was anything she _should_ say, knowing it could have been because of _her_ that he'd lost the memories, from what her Jack had told her, and having no way to prove otherwise - but before she could decide she saw Jack reaching for the vortex manipulator and began to squirm. Oh no. She did _not_ want to be teleported anywhere.

“Don’t you _dare_ throw me over your shoulder…”

“But it’s much more fun this way!” Jack laughed, holding her still with one strong arm as he tapped in coordinates. To where - if he was telling the truth - Roda could only guess. She tried to reach for his holstered gun with his cuffed hands, hearing him hurriedly work away at the watch and knowing that as soon as they teleported away, getting back to her TARDIS unseen would be an absolute nightmare.

“Go to Skaro.”

“Sweet-cheeks,” said Jack calmly, “there’s a whole different circle of Hell reserved for men like me and I’m telling ya, I’ll go there gladly.” He slammed his hand down on the controls, and time and space yanked them through the void. “But not today.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.”_   
>  **― Colette, 'The Pure and the Impure'**

**CARDIFF, 2006**

“So who is she, then - another old flame?”

Jack glanced up from his desk and a mountain of sparse and useless paperwork as Ianto stepped into his office. He stretched his neck and back - _hell, I must_ _’ve been at this for hours_ \- and accepted the outstretched mug of coffee with a trademark grin. _Might as well take a break_ , he reasoned. It wasn’t as though he was getting anywhere. After the destruction of Canary Wharf, most of what Torchwood happened to know about Time Lords came from Jack, so he was pretty much reading his own notes. He’d found a couple of pages on Time Lord biology that someone had managed to convince UNIT to share with them once (probably all gleaned from the Doctor) but it did very little more than repeat what Jack knew, and reiterate a couple of weird things about them that would make any other organization want to cut them open in the name of science. Luckily, Torchwood wasn’t that kind of organization; at least, not when they were still alive, and not when they could help it.

Taking a deep gulp of the mug of coffee (made, of course, _exactly_ how he liked it, with just enough milk) he sighed with mock-frustration and gestured at the empty chair across the desk, inviting Ianto to join him.

“Not every good-looking alien we meet used to know me.” Ianto’s raised eyebrow moved ever so slightly higher, and Jack laughed, putting the poor man out of his misery. “But this time, you’d be right.” He paused, narrowing his eyes in thought. “Kind of. Wouldn’t call her an old flame.”

“Sounds… complicated.”

Jack laughed again. “You have no idea.”

Ianto, old, dependable Ianto, knew an attempt to change the subject when he heard it. He studied him over the rim of his mug, trying to decide how much information was worth sharing. The team’d work out soon enough what was missing from the filing cabinet between _Tiger-owl_ and _Traken_ , especially with Ianto’s careful eye, and he still didn’t know if they were dealing with a threat, or a potential ally. But where to begin - and how much personal history he was willing to share - was another matter entirely.

“She’s a Time Lord.”

“Like the Doctor?”

Jack's jaw tensed. He and Ianto had very different opinions of the Doctor, he was sure. The Battle of Canary Wharf wasn't one that painted the Doctor in the best light for its few survivors, but then they hadn't known the man before. And then there was Rose... his heart still ached.

“Same species. They're an ancient race of beings from a long-gone planet. They perfected time travel, took out any species that might have beaten them to it and until recently, treated the universe as their playground. They were all wiped out... technically speaking.” Something, Jack thought darkly, might interest the Doctor if he ever deigned to pop in and say hi.

“Seeing as we have one in a cell downstairs.”

“Precisely.”

“Is she a hostile?” Jack sighed, but didn’t answer. Ianto - who was better than anybody else in the Hub at reading between the lines of what Jack said - nodded knowingly. “Ah. So that’s why she’s in the cell.”

“The last time we met,” Jack replied, speaking half to himself, “she stole my partner’s lipstick,” Ianto gave him a confused look, “and left me handcuffed to a rental car.” He paused. “Not in the fun way.”

“So she’s that kind of flame.”

He couldn’t help himself. Jack laughed, rolling onto the balls of his feet so that he could reach over the table and kiss Ianto on the forehead. He was cute when he was jealous. “Not even close. I was arresting her,” Ianto opened his mouth, “no - really. You should see the price on her head. Temporal thief, con artist-”

“Takes one to know one, apparently.”

Jack snorted. “You name a white-collar crime, she’s wanted for it somewhere. James - my partner,” he clarified, at Ianto’s even more confused expression, “and I were supposed to bring her in years ago but she got away.” A beat. “…Twice.”

“Oh yes,” Jack couldn't help but grin, ignoring Ianto's frown of irritation. “Good coffee, by the way.”

Ianto pursed his lips. “You're changing the subject.”

“You should see how much she could drink, though. Coffee, that is.” Jack smirked, raising his mug. “Honestly, if you were interested in a threesome she’d probably jump you on sight if she tried some of-”

“ _Jack_ ,” said Ianto, warningly. Jack shut his mouth with a cheeky wink.

“Right. Business first? She told me,” he continued, more than used to frustrating people with half a story he couldn’t finish, “that she knew me in the future. And that we’d be friends.”

“And you believed her?”

“I don’t know,” Jack admitted, finishing his coffee in one gulp.

He reached for a remote control by his lamp, thumbing a button in the centre. The monitor across the room flicked from the unassuming Torchwood look to grainy non-images of empty cells (and a few containing weevils) before settling on the live footage of the Redjay pacing her cell, clearly on the hunt for something. From time to time she crouched down, or stared at one corner. _Presumably she knows there_ _’s a camera in there somewhere._ Or was she looking for a weak spot in the security? He would have to go check on her sooner or later, especially before she _found_ a way to get out. There’d been something in her record, he remembered, about being good with technology.

Right now, though, he had research to do. Ianto was right; he might ‘know’ her, but there was no telling what sort of threat she could be to his team. After all, she’d taken out more than two trained Time Agents, back in the day. Himself _and_ his partner, not to mention others, he was sure. She’d not used lethal force, not once so far as he could tell… but had that changed, now? Would she do something, if provoked? If she felt trapped? He couldn’t afford to lose anyone in Torchwood to _his_ carelessness or _his_ hope that maybe, the Rift had sent a friend.

“But,” he rested his head in his hands, staring intently at the feed, “that is _exactly_ what I intend to find out.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“There is only one way to fight, and that's dirty. Clean gentlemanly fighting will get you nowhere but dead, and fast.”_   
>  **― Jeaniene Frost, 'Halfway to the Grave'**

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, The 51st Century**

Nauseated though she was by the teleport, Roda wasted no time in trying to tackle Jack to the ground as soon as they fell back through the void onto solid time.

Her head spun. She’d used a vortex manipulator before, but rarely tagging along for the ride; she’d usually been the one to set the coordinates. (Since Jack's was broken, in their timeline, the issue had never yet come up.) And there was something to be said, apparently, for landing on your feet as opposed to slung over somebody else’s shoulder. It was a crude enough mode of transport, for someone that was used to a TARDIS, without being left with the sensation of falling through the air, stopping, and never actually hitting the ground. Thanks to Roda, though, it had only taken a matter of seconds for them both to hit the wall, and then the door, and then the floor of the room that they’d landed in; and not at all in the fun way.

Battered and bruised by throwing herself at Jack’s shoulder, Roda only just managed to gain the upper hand as they rolled to a clumsy stop, Jack swearing in a dialect she’d never heard him speak before. Even with her hands cuffed behind her back, she could still fight him. As soon as they’d teleported, she’d had to reassess her thoughts about accidentally hurting him. _Some scrapes and bruises,_ she decided, _are just going to have to happen. I have to get back to my TARDIS._

His vortex manipulator was the first casualty, smashing under Roda’s foot as soon as she managed to get it free of Jack’s sprawling legs. He winced as she stamped down but grabbed her leg a second later, and she knew that she’d not broken anything. It was just going to hurt, a little. Gripping Jack with her thighs and shifting her weight as best she could - what she had on him in speed, she knew from her time working with him with Torchwood, he had in strength and size - she caught her breath as she tried to plan out her next move. She glanced quickly around the room, looking for something that she could grab behind her back and smash over his head, or something. The nearest thing to them was a table, but the lamp that she could see above it seemed to be screwed to the wall, and there was no way she could swing an entire table at someone with her hands behind her back. Across the room was a large bed - big enough for two people, easily - and a window that was nowhere near big enough for her to climb through. Another table under the window had what looked like a coffee machine on it. So a hotel room, then? _If I can get him to chase me that way,_ Roda wondered, _maybe I can knock it down onto him._

But she didn’t get a chance to try. They’d been too noisy, hitting the ground. As Jack grunted and managed to throw her of - frantically grabbing for her cuffs - and Roda tried to scramble away, the nearby door swung inward and nearly slammed into them both as another man came charging in, a revolver in each hand. The Time Lady froze, taking in the mismatched collection of clothes and weapons that the man seemed to be carrying and the guns trained on both her _and_ Jack, and came up with an answer without much thought.

“Great,” she groaned, letting Jack pin her face-down to the ground, giving up the grapple before it even had a chance to begin. “There’s _two of you._ ”

With two Time Agents manhandling her, it didn’t take long for Roda to find herself tossed unceremoniously onto the bed, one wrist cuffed to the headboard and her gear well and truly out of reach. She had kicked and squirmed - catching the newcomer in the nose with the heel of one boot, which he had ripped off her foot and thrown across the room - but outnumbered, she hadn’t stood a chance. Glaring at them both and flexing her free wrist, she watched as the stranger - short, blond, skinny - wiped blood from his face with an excited look on his face and sized her up the same way Jack had, back in the plaza.

“Not that I don’t _love_ your taste, James,” he began, still panting, “but haven’t we talked about bringing home girls on a job?”

Jack laughed, punching his co-worker in the shoulder playfully, rubbing his hip where Roda had thrown him to the ground. “To let you get into something comfortable, first?”

Roda rolled her eyes.

“But seriously,” the newcomer chuckled, licking his own blood from his thumb. “Is this one open to threesomes?”

Roda spluttered as Jack roared with laughter. “I’m - you think I’m a _whore_?!”

“This is the Redjay, John.” He looked at Roda. “Redjay, John Hart.” The blond - John - waggled his fingers at her, blowing a kiss. "Time Lord we were looking for? One I lost a few years ago?”

“Thought you said she had curly hair?”

“Must’ve regenerated,” shrugged Jack. He pouted at her, but there was a darkness behind his eyes. A loss that Roda could keenly sense. She knew, from talking to _her_ Jack, that those two years weighed heavily on his conscience. “Took me a coupl’a hours tracking her to work that out.”

“More’n once?”

“Probably. You’ve seen her record.” Jack looked at the two halves of his vortex manipulator, shaking his head in disbelief. He looked up at his partner, and then seemed to notice that the man’s wrists were both empty. “Where’s yours?”

“Lost it in a bet,” the man shot Jack a self-deprecating grin, utterly shameless. “Thought I could trust _you_ not to throw a pretty girl at yours.”

“I’m right _here,_ you know,” muttered Roda, at a loss for words as Jack and his partner bickered like lovers. They both looked at her, surprised by the interruption, and then John broke the silence.

“Was that an invitation, love?”

“Oh, fuck you.” Roda shot him a gesture that she hoped was still rude in this century, turning her back on them both.

“Ooh,” he shuddered with obvious pleasure. “I like her, James.”

“Call me Jack.” Roda rolled her eyes at the wall. “ _Apparently_ that’s my name.”

“Ooh, you _do_ look like a Jack." He licked his lips. "Any truth to it?”

Roda heard Jack laugh. “’Course not. But _she_ seems to like it.”

“I hate you both,” Roda corrected, too thrown by the turn of events to even consider rethinking her plan just yet. “Don’t flatter yourselves.”

“Yeah, well,” she could hear the smile on Jack’s face, and his retreating footsteps. “Keep telling yourself that, sweet-cheeks.”

“That’s not my name!”

The door to the other room shut again as Roda yelled, and she threw her hand in the air, left alone with a Time Agent that she’d never met before. Her mind still full of the horrors of her first regeneration, and the stories that the Celestial Intervention Agency told about the barbarism of the Time Agency - even though she’d learned, the hard way, how _wrong_ their assessment could be - Roda forced herself to turn around and study the man and try not to think too much about how fucked she was. _Better to take a look at him,_ she reminded herself, grimly, falling back on habits still fresh from the War, _and see what weapons he_ _’s carrying, and where his weaknesses might be, than have Jack return to find a bullet in my head because I looked at him funny._ But she could tell, as soon as she saw the look in his eyes, that murder was… well, perhaps not the _last_ thing on his mind. There was something in his eyes that she didn’t quite trust. But regardless, murder wasn’t the _first_ thing on his mind, and he was studying her from across the room like a piece of meat. Roda rolled her eyes again - _they_ _’re going to fall out of my head, at this rate -_ and took stock of the situation.

He was heavily armed; that was the first thing she noticed, apart from the air of cocky arrogance he radiated worse than Jack’s pheromones. John Hart (if that was even _his_ real name) held himself like a man who knew that he was attractive, and knew that it would get him places. But he had what looked to be katanas slung over his back, at least two guns, and from the way that he was walking probably a knife in his boot. And if he was anything like Jack could be, that was probably just the weapons that she could see on him at first glance. But his discipline was good. The guns were holstered, the katanas looked to be more for show than anything else - especially paired with the Venetian coat that looked to be the real thing - and he would have a Time Agent’s training. He could kill her before _she_ could get anything lethal in her hands, but she could tell that he didn’t _want_ to.

Jack looked just the way that Roda had always remembered him, if perhaps a couple of years younger. Jack, without question, was good-looking; even, and perhaps especially, when he held her life in his hands. That was just something Roda knew she was going to have to deal with, and perhaps deal with _personally_ when she got back to Torchwood. But John was good-looking as well. Cropped blond hair, a good-looking jacket (which she’d always been a sucker for) and a chiseled jaw that under better circumstances, she would certainly have enjoyed. He was slimmer than Jack, but his hands were rougher and he was a Skaro of a lot scruffier and it worked for him. Because for all that Jack had been teasing her, when he’d arrested her, she never really _had_ been interested in a man in uniform. But a man who looked like he’d been in a fight and _won_ it, that was a man that piqued her interest.

Wick, of course… Wick had been both things at once. Built for a uniform, and even more attractive when the uniform was scuffed and torn and Roda was helping her _out_ of it and joking about the state of the other guy. But she didn’t want to think about Wick, right now. Only when she was alone with her thoughts, and Wicinrondrometa could be the _only_ thing on her mind.

“Like what you see, Red?”

Caught in the act of checking John out, shook from nostalgia, Roda felt her cheeks flush.

“I’d like it better if _you_ were in the cuffs,” she snapped, not entirely dishonestly (for a number of reasons), “and I was half-way across time and space by now.”

“Oh I _bet_ you would.” John sat down at the end of the bed, just out of reach of a solid kick in the shins from Roda. “Take it you led your Jack-"

"Jack."

"Like I said, Jack. Take it you led him a merry chase, then?” Roda raised an eyebrow, and refused to answer. He put a hand to his chest, pretending to be upset. “Well, there’s Gallifreyan niceties for you.”

“What the Skaro would _you_ know about Gallifreyan niceties?”

“You’re not the first Time Lord I’ve met, love. And let me tell you,” he leaned in conspiratorially. “I learned a lot about _his_ niceties. And then hers, when she regenerated. The things I could _tell_ you about Gallifreyan niceties…”

“Do Time Agents think about _anything_ other than sex?”

“Sex, drugs, drink,” the man counted on his fingers, and then pinned her with a look, “and yeah - probably more shagging.”

Roda gave up trying to talk to him after that, rolling over once again and doing her best to get comfortable on the bed with one arm stuck above her head. It wasn’t easy. She heard both Time Agents coming and going - talking about whether they’d try and get the vortex manipulator fixed, or just take her in the long way - and tried to work at the cuff when none of them were watching her, but Jack’s work was good. In the end, she just shoved a couple of pillows under her head to try and feel less like her shoulder was being pulled out of its socket and resigned herself to fate. Escape wasn’t completely off the table, but she might as well wait until they made to move her, instead of tiring herself out with an impossible task. As the hours dragged on without anything changing, she even considered trying to take a light nap, and grew so bored of waiting that she started trying to remember half-forgotten lessons from the Prydonian Academy, just to pass the time.

It had been dark for a couple of hours, by Roda’s count, by the time the two men reappeared and bothered to talk to her again, flicking on the lamp on the wall as they entered. She laid still, wondering if she could pretend to be asleep instead of having to deal with anymore of them, but soon the bed creaked under the weight of someone sitting down beside her again, and the scent of brewing coffee became impossible to ignore. A few minutes later not-Jack waved a paper cup in front of her face, and Roda completely forgot to be mad at him.

“Coffee, sweet-cheeks?”

“Could you at _least_ call me by my name?” she asked, shuffling into a sitting position one-handedly, stifling a sigh. “Sweet-checks, Red, _c_ _’mon._ ”

“And for the _file,_ ” responded Jack, sardonically, holding the steaming coffee out of reach, “that name would be…?”

“Jane Doe.” Roda smirked. Jack clicked his tongue.

“Worth a try. So it’s sweet-cheeks, Red, or nothing, ‘til you give me something to work with.”

“Can I at _least_ have the coffee?”

She was _dying_ for a mug. Ianto, she decided, must have gotten her addicted. There could be no other explanation for it. But it was coffee she was being offered. _Real_ coffee, or at least a damn good fake. And she hadn’t had one since leaving the twenty first century, a good couple of days ago. At the moment, there were very few things she wouldn’t have done for Ianto’s brew, but she was sure what Jack was offering would do.

No matter how filthy that thought sounded.

“Since you asked so nicely.”

Jack made himself comfortable against the wall, close enough to Roda that they were almost touching. Forgetting, for a moment, that they didn’t know each other yet Roda didn’t bother to move. She dusted the rim of the paper cup, took a sniff to check for some kind of knock-out drug, and then downed half of the steaming beverage in one mouthful. Jack’s eyes were on her - she could feel them - but she ignored him, savouring the taste and the smell and the rush of caffeine after what had been, frankly, a terrible attempt at a heist. Somehow - despite all of her earlier concerns - the danger didn’t quite feel _real_ yet. Perhaps it was the fact that Jack was here. Perhaps it was the fact that she was no longer that young Gallifreyan who’d fled the Time Agency with tears in her eyes, and had gotten perhaps a little over-confident in her abilities to deal with law enforcement over the centuries

Or perhaps it was the coffee; things didn’t feel so bad, with a cup of coffee in her hands. She could feel not-Jack’s eyes on her as she drank the rest of it more slowly, and at least at the moment it was just the two of them. No John Hart. And from the sound of things, she’d broken his vortex manipulator good and proper; they weren’t going anywhere, any time soon.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Interrogation is by far the most effective method of speedily banishing inappropriate thoughts from the mind.”_   
>  **― Olli Jalonen**

**CARDIFF, 2006**

“This isn’t a Time Agency cell.”

_Straight to the point, then. This is going to be harder than I thought._

It would have been almost funny, Jack decided, if he wasn’t trying very hard to serious. And, of course, if the idea of being mistaken for a Time Agent was a particularly flattering one, these days. Especially coming from a Time Lord - any Time Lord, really, but this Time Lord in _particular_ had made their opinion of the Agency quite clear the last time that they’d met. And so since he had to assume that though _his_ last meeting with her hadn’t happened yet where _her_ time line was concerned (bloody Time Lords), she clearly remembered the first time that they had met - which he didn’t. Which only made things… again, even more complicated. _Great._ No matter the mystery, no matter their potential history, he had to remember to treat her like any other potentially malicious alien species that had come through the Rift.

And the more he thought about it, the fact that she _had_ , in fact, come through the Rift was stranger and stranger. If she’d been coming to refuel at it the same way that the Doctor did, then he’d have understood what she was doing in twenty first century Cardiff. But she very clearly _hadn_ _’t_ been. She had just appeared in the sky that evening and - he could only assume - crash-landed. Of course that didn’t rule out that she _had_ aimed for the Rift, except that it had coincided exactly with a spike of activity in their readings, and Jack didn’t exactly believe in coincidences. Which begged the question that if she hadn’t been planning on refueling, what was she doing here, and had she turned up on purpose?

He was having a hard time working out what the Redjay-the-criminal might want with Cardiff… but stranger things had happened.

“You’re on Earth.” Jack crossed his arms and eyed the security pad to the side of her cell, careful not to let her follow his gaze. Over the years, he’d learned more than his fair share of tricks for interrogating people. One of the best tools of the trade was giving up a little information in the hopes that your target would reciprocate. Make it look as though you were being clumsy, or alternatively, that you didn’t think it was information they should be all that interested in. If the mark thought they knew more than you did, chances are they’d be smug about it and let something slip. “Twenty first century.”

“But that doesn’t make any _sense_.”

The problem with Jack’s cunning ‘get her to talk’ plan was that she didn’t seem to be in the mood to be smug about things. She didn’t, in fact, seem to be in the mood to grace him with more than the bare minimum of attention. Something was on her mind, and it was obvious that her unease and confusion wasn’t an act. She genuinely _didn_ _’t_ know what she was doing on Earth; which meant that this might all have been a mistake. On the other hand, it also meant that she could have been running from something, and it didn’t change the fact that she still might do something lethal to _not_ be where she was.

“I wasn’t anywhere _near_ Sol-3,” she continued. Jack was starting to get dizzy; she’d been pacing since before he turned up, almost grinding a line in the concrete. “ _Or_ the twenty first century.” She suddenly stopped, pausing to look right at him, mirroring his body movements. He raised an eyebrow. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I didn’t bring you anywhere,” argued Jack. _Except of course from the basin to here, but, small details._ “You flew yourself.” He shrugged. “I mean, I’m not sure I’d give you points for landing. Do you always head for water, or is it just not your strong point?”

“I’ll ask you one more time: why did you bring me here?”

The Time Lady closed the gap between them so fast that if there hadn’t been reinforced glass between them, they would have been touching. Jack swallowed unconsciously, caught off guard by the ferocity in her gaze. This wasn’t the same Redjay he had met in the Boeshane Peninsula all those years ago. It took him a few seconds to work out what was different. But it was the way she held herself; mirroring his movements, her back straight, less fluid than he remembered. Regimented, almost. She held herself not like a confident thief - or the flirt she’d been before - but like a soldier.

And now that he looked at her more closely, there were her clothes. Worn leather armour, and what didn’t look too unlike a sort of kevlar build into the trademark red. She had one pauldron left, her clothes were covered in what looked like scorch marks, and there was reinforcing on her thighs and arms, no doubt for taking blows, or lying on the ground for long periods of time. And then there was the symbol on the belt she was wearing, hanging half off her waist where it had been scorched and torn in two. Like an hourglass, or the infinity symbol, but far more decorative. It was etched in gold onto the pauldron, too. Absolutely nowhere did she have the blue paint or the red feathers that he remembered, from her file, had been her calling card way back when, or that she’d worn behind her ear in the Boeshane Peninsula.

“This is Torchwood,” he reiterated, sighing. “We took you into custody when we fished you out of the bay.”

She studied him for a moment, eyes drifting over his coat, hesitating on his stripes. But she was at least listening to him, which was a start.

“And where is my TARDIS, _Captain_?”

“We impounded it.”

Fury flashed across her eyes as they narrowed. “You wouldn’t be able to get into her.”

Jack held up his hands. “I wasn’t going to-”

“And if you do _anything_ to me,” she pressed, ignoring his protests, her head held high, “the Time Agency will _never_ get my TARDIS.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. From the twitch at the side of her eye, it wasn’t the best thing he could have done, and he cleared his throat as he tried to get his amusement under control. _It really isn_ _’t funny,_ he tried to tell himself, awkwardly. _All it means is she_ _’s less likely to trust you, if she remembers you._ The absurdity of having the upper hand on a Time Lord when it came to _time travel_ was more entertaining than he’d thought it would be. But how long ago had it been for her? Months? Years? Centuries? Would her distrust of him still be fresh? Did she even remember him, or had it simply been an educated guess?

When he spoke, he grinned from ear to ear. Maybe lightening the mood would… lighten the mood.

“Sweet-cheeks,” she scowled at the nickname, “those days are long past.”

She clearly didn’t believe him.

“The CIA will take it. They - they need every TARDIS they can get during a War.” She paced away from him, getting lost once again in her own thoughts. Jack could tell that she was talking more to herself than to him, thinking out loud; almost as though in the absence of further threats to be made, she’d forgotten he was there. For a minute, the seasoned soldier was replaced by a rookie, blatantly anxious. “She’s combat-ready, even if she _is_ old she won’t like having another pilot, but maybe Wick could-” Horror flashed across her face with such sincerity that Jack almost reached for his gun. “Please, you have to let me out. I need to get back. Maybe if I’m quick enough she’ll - she’ll…”

Hands clapped over her mouth as the Redjay froze. Jack was no stranger to shock as he saw her legs wobble. She took a step back, legs bumping off the small cot behind her and she sat down - hard. Skin pale and breathing shallow and rapid she stared at nothing at all, and then her hands covered her face.

Jack unfolded his arms, and reached for his earpiece, ready to call in help. Gwen was upstairs, watching the security feed while they spoke, ready to jump in if he needed her. She would recognize the signs if he went on guard. Probably recognize shock from working with civilians, too. And he'd already told her to call in Owen, just in case. Privately, he didn’t want to have to involve anyone else until he knew what was going on, but anesthetic _was_ an option. They could knock her out, calm her down, and keep her under while he worked out what this talk about a War was, and if it was a threat.

He didn’t want to treat her like just rift debris; with a spark of surprise, he realised he really was hoping the meeting would go well. And there was so much more going on here than he understood. If it was help she needed, was _that_ why they would become friends, like she’d implied?

“Redjay.” Jack spoke calmly but firmly, putting on his best Captain's voice. “Roda.” Her real name got her attention, breaking the Redjay out of her reverie. She lowered her hands to stare at him, but she didn't look pleased by any stretch. “I'm not a Time Agent anymore, and you're not under arrest. Well,” he chuckled briefly, “not really. My name is Captain Jack Harkness.” He raised his hands, showing her that he was unarmed, and maintained his calm tone of voice. “This is Cardiff, the year is 2006, and you're in a Torchwood cell underneath the bay because you came through a rift in time and space and crash-landed in the basin.”

“But - the War…” He could see the gears in her mind work as she listened to him, especially his tone. She was still pale, but her breathing was steadying, if only a little. “The Commander…”

“I'm sorry,” he said, gently. “But we have to hold you in this cell until we determine whether or not you're a threat to the human race.”

“There were…” She frowned, as if she was trying to remember something. “We were near Karn. Some moon.” It wasn’t a planet Jack had heard of. “There was an ambush. The Daleks, they-”

Jack’s head snapped up, identical horror on his face. “Did you say _Daleks_? Here?”

He suddenly felt more tense, ill even. There couldn’t be Daleks on her tail; there was no way he’d have missed _them_ coming through the Rift, too? He tried to remain calm, to bite down his own trauma and think about the team, and the sensible way to go about this. There probably weren’t Daleks, _there are not Daleks,_ he reminded himself. It was just his _own_ trauma rearing its head.

His brow furrowed as a memory nagged at the back of his mind; a thought that - now it was there - he was amazed he hadn’t remembered sooner. The Last Great Time War. The Doctor had talked about it, and the whole universe knew about it. (He’d even almost brought it up to Ianto himself, a little over half an hour ago.) Little details of her appearance began to make sense. Now-familiar scorch marks on a uniform that clearly didn’t fit her - a recent regeneration, like he’d suspected. The air of a soldier - a criminal, press ganged into her homeworld’s War. The disorientation, the age in her eyes, the way that she held herself like a cat, unwilling to show that it was in pain.

There was no reason that the Daleks might have followed her here. If they had, he would have known about them by now. So she must have been fresh from a fight, or have been fleeing one. Or perhaps the rift had just appeared in her part of space at precisely the worst time. She'd mentioned a Commander. _Could that be_ _‘Wick’? Is that why she’s responding to my officer’s voice?_

Jack took a deep breath through his nose and held it for a moment before making a decision. “Gwen.”

The earpiece crackled for a bit and then the policewoman replied, voice sharp and worry evident. “What is it Jack? Do you need back-up?”

“Get Tosh to scan the Rift.” He kept one eye on the nervous Time Lord as he talked. “We're looking for anything else that came through at the same time as our current guest, or increased activity.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Probably not,” replied Jack. The Redjay tilted her head to one side, brow knit in thought. _Is her hearing good enough to know what Gwen_ _’s saying, too? Probably not._ “But I need to be sure.”

“What about the alien?”

“She’s secured.” At that, the Redjay snorted sarcastically. Jack managed a feeble smile. “Let me know what you find out.” He cut the signal, and looked down at the Redjay as he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry to cut this date-”

“Interrogation.”

“Short,” continued Jack, ignoring the interruption. “I’ll be back later.” He turned to leave. “We’ll talk then.” He half laughed. “Maybe I’ll even answer some of those questions.” He paused again, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder, and fighting the feeling in his gut that this was somehow… unnecessary. _It_ _’s Daleks. I have to be sure._ “But you’re safe here,” he promised. “There’s a perception filter on the Hub. Nothing can get in.”

There was a short silence, before the Redjay asked quietly: “or out?”

“Or out,” he agreed, glad that his turned back hid his expression from the Time Lord.

He climbed the stairs before she could speak again and made for his office, ignoring both Gwen and Owen as they tried to ask him how the interrogation had gone. The door shut behind him and he sank into his chair with a groan, undoing the top two buttons of his shirt and closing his eyes. _Daleks. She had to bring up Daleks._ He needed a moment. Better still, he needed a stiffer drink than one of Ianto’s coffees.

Memories fought for a front row seat in his mind as he opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, pouring a shot into his discarded mug. The Redjay, that night on the ship with John; her promise that they would meet again; the flash of light and searing pain as he died; the agony of coming back, and being alone. He didn't know what to think anymore, or what to expect.

Tosh's scans wouldn't take long. Whatever he did next, he had to know for sure there were no Daleks first, and that the Redjay hadn't endangered them all. But wouldn't she have warned him, if she did? Or had he been taken in by the kind of scam that he should have seen coming all along? He shook his head; the _last_ person to ally with the Daleks to doom the Earth was a Time Lord fresh from the War. He was getting paranoid.

Taking a swig from the mug of whiskey Jack cracked his knuckles and leaned forward, opening the laptop on his desk and logging into the network. A couple of minutes of encryption later and he opened up the highest security fail-safe that Torchwood had. One they’d never actually even _used_ before. Tosh had constructed it with a little help from himself, and some wreckage from the Rift. It was drastic, potentially irreversible and had never been tested but where Daleks were concerned...

He put out a quick message, letting the team know they were locking down the Hub, just to be certain. Four ‘affirmatives’ came back in response with varying degrees of alarm (none of them particularly concerned; he’d been careful to temper his voice). He sat back in his seat, feeling more relaxed now that he was relatively certain that any Daleks - which probably weren’t even there - wouldn’t get in. _Or at least the bastards_ _’ll have a hard time at it._ He wondered if the Time Lady would hear the pneumatic hissing of the system settling in, and if it’d make her more cagey, or less.

He’d find out when he went back to talk to her later, once Tosh got back to him with the scan results. For now, he would wait.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“That's the funny thing about trying to escape. You never really can. Maybe temporarily, but not completely.”_   
>  **― Jennifer L. Armentrout, 'Onyx'**

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, The 51st Century**

“Another?”

There was something to be said about coffee. Coffee, Roda had decided, since regenerating last, could send you to a whole other world. There was the buzz of the caffeine - something she seemed to be more sensitive to, this time around - and then the bite of the tannins. _Very restorative thing, tannins. Maybe that_ _’s why I like it._ But no matter what ailed her, she’d learned in the last year that sitting down in the Hub and grabbing a cup of the coffee that Ianto had just brewed was a balm for pretty much any bad mood, and a very good way to relax. And so having decided that for now, at least, she was stuck in this but-for-the-grace-of-Rassilon paradox she’d found herself in, she had let the coffee carry her away to a presence of mind where she _didn_ _’t_ want to break two peoples’ noses, and then continue. Being left alone for a little bit had made that easier, too. But it also meant that she’d not really been paying attention when not-Jack had turned up, dangling another cup of coffee in his fingertips right in front of her eyes.

After a pause, Roda nodded. He sat down beside her, transferring it to his other hand absentmindedly. Roda almost reached out for it - she had made herself more comfortably, sitting cross-legged on the mattress, while he was up - but the look on his face made her pause. She tipped her head to one side, and pouted.

“…what.”

Jack looked from her to the door and back again. _Apparently he wants this conversation to be private, too._ And then he lowered his voice, handing her the mug with a ‘well, why not’ sort of shrug.

“You said we’ve met before.”

“Well,” said Roda, tentatively; aware that the Jack she knew didn’t know the details of their first meeting. Only, apparently, that she had ‘got away’. “So did _you_.”

“Yeah,” he responded, smirk overpowering his unease. “But _you_ called me Jack. I’ve just seen the files,” he shrugged, far too casually, “lost the years.”

“It’s complicated,” said Roda, too-quickly, silencing herself with the coffee.

She took another long drink, trying not to let it burn her throat, this time. An impatient look crossed Jack’s eyes, but she could see he was still wearing that smile like a mask. _Or a shield._ She’d always assumed that the caution and care _her_ Jack took had come in the years between the Time Agency and Torchwood. Now, she wasn’t so sure. It was something to ask him… eventually. There was no good way to begin a conversation like _that,_ especially considering she’d decided it best not to let him know that he’d shot her, before.

“I like complicated,” said Jack, inching a little closer, until more than just their legs were touching. Roda nearly choked on her coffee, but didn’t pull away. “So, how about you try me?”

“Jack Harkness,” she asked, unable to keep a smile from her face despite the mess they were in, “is this an interrogation, or a pick-up?”

He tsked at her playfully. “Which would you prefer?”

Roda chuckled. “I think it’s _pretty_ obvious which I’d prefer.”

Jack laughed, and put a hand on her leg, fingers trailing up the tie at the top of her trousers. Roda stayed as still as she dared, sipping the coffee casually. “Well. If you’re _offering._ ”

“Get me out of these cuffs,” she said, pleasantly. “And you bet I am.”

There was a second where Roda thought Jack might have done it. Either for the flirting, or in the hopes that she’d slip up, and tell him more of what he wanted to know. But before he could move again the door swung inward - kicked open from the other side - and in swanned John Hart, ruining… well. Whatever kind of mood it had been. Roda wasn’t entirely sure herself, anymore. His shirt missing and a half-finished glass of something smoky and alcoholic in one hand, the other Time Agent planted himself on the edge of the bed and kicked off his shoes without waiting for permission. There was no chance in Skaro, Roda decided, that he was _oblivious_ to what he was interrupting. But she could smell the drink on his breath as he languished himself across the bed, and she wrinkled her nose despite herself as she downed what was left off the coffee and rolled her eyes.

“James. Or Jaaaack,” he drawled, swigging back the last of his own drink and then throwing the glass against the wall. It smashed into a hundred tiny pieces, which was apparently hilarious. “This where you were hiding out?”

“You’re drunk,” said Jack, agitation warring with fondness. John laughed.

“ _You_ _’re_ drunk.”

Jack held up his cup. “Coffee.”

“Well,” John pouted, rolling onto his front, looking at them both. “ _You_ two are no fun.” He flopped back onto his back, snatching one of the pillows from where Roda had stacked them up and tucking it under his arms. “And I’m tired.”

“You know, we could be having this conversation in our _own_ bed,” Roda raised an eyebrow as Jack spoke, “if you’d not lost your manipulator.”

“Yeah, well,” John shrugged. “Could’a would’a.”

“I -” Roda gestured with the empty coffee cup as the implication both that the Time Agents were a couple and that there was only _one_ bed begun to sink in. “You can’t…!” She kicked lightly at John with her bare foot, trying to push him off the edge of the bed to no avail. “Can you at _least_ sleep on the couch?”

No luck. Jack patted his waist, taking his pistol out of his holster as he tossed his paper cup into the waste paper bin and then doing the same for John’s. Making a point of putting them well out of Roda’s reach he sat on the edge of the bed and began to unbutton his shirt in turn. Once it was loose he smacked John’s arse, muttering ‘shift it’, and once the other man had made himself comfortable on the outside of the mattress he returned his attention to Roda and made a sweeping gesture of the middle of the bed. Roda narrowed her eyes, and shook her head.

“Not on your _life_.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. Haughtily, Roda rolled onto her side again and curled up where she was, pressing herself up against the wall. It wouldn’t be comfortable sleeping like this… but if she had to share a bed with her _literal_ captors, then she was doing it with Jack as a buffer between herself and a drunken stranger who didn’t think taking his guns off to go to bed was a good idea. _At least if the other one tries something Jack_ _’ll stop him… right?_ Her Jack would. She had to hope he was the same man, or at least not so changed by the Doctor that he didn’t still have the heart she knew him for. There was a long pause where, she reasoned, he weighed up professionalism with… everything else about him, and then she felt Jack lie down between the two of them and put one hand behind his head with a contented sigh. John was already snoring, face-down, and as Roda sneaked a look she could see he had one arm hanging over the side of the bed, where there seemed to be a bottle of something tucked in against the dresser. But Jack saw her looking and winked at her before closing his eyes and snapping his fingers. The light dimmed, and he tucked the other hand behind his head with a chuckle.

_Fucking fifth first century theatrics._

“If you get cold in the night, Redjay,” said Jack casually, yawning, “I’ll happily be the little spoon...”

***

It seemed to take forever for Jack to fall asleep; John was out like a light, and a loud sleeper. Lying facing the wall, at least _pretending_ to be asleep, Roda had to resist the urge to stay still until she was absolutely sure that Jack wasn’t going to grab her the second that she tried to reach over him. She knew that Jack was a light sleeper; she had to be lighter than _that._

Roda pushed herself up onto her elbows, watching both Time Agents sleep. Jack was still lying on one of his arms, but the other had snaked over his eyes at some point in the night, shielding them from the meager light. She had to stop herself from kissing him on the forehead. He looked almost… peaceful. He carried pain, already… but nothing like the Jack that she knew so well. If she could keep him here, keep his life peaceful… but she couldn’t meddle in his timeline, and she wouldn’t meddle in his life. She respected Jack far more than that. _John,_ on the other hand… well. He was still sprawled out, taking up more than half of the bed, face-down, and for a moment Roda seriously considered that he’d died. And then he snorted and started to snore again, and she rolled her eyes so hard that they almost fell out of her head.

_Fine. He_ _’s fine, then._

Fine, and her most likely chance at escape. His guns and swords were out of reach, and he’d thrown off his boots where she was sure he’d been hiding that knife, but Roda saw him as the sort of person to be good for a Mongolian strip-tease. Slowly crouching - grateful at how quiet the bed was - she stretched one leg over Jack and strained to reach his companion. It wasn’t easy; with one arm still cuffed, she was stretched out about as far as she could, and she could only just reach his trousers with her fingertips. Grunting with frustration she tugged on the headboard and watched the wood bend in the middle under the force. If she could just pull it a _little_ further, then it might snap. And even if it woke the Time Agents up, she’d be free and could dive for a weapon. Give herself more of a fighting chance. But it wasn’t breaking and with a sigh, she inched back over Jack, stretched out the ache in her legs and then tried one… more… time…

 _There!_ She felt something hard, on John’s hip. Leather, from the way her fingers slid off it as soon as she made contact. A scabbard for a knife, maybe. Flailing her hand again she tried to wrap her fingers around it, and managed to get a clumsy grip on what felt like ivory or ceramic. She carefully rolled her fingers over the edge of it, trying to get it to slide up out of the sheath. _Easy does it, easy_ _…_

John moved in his sleep, stretching out the arm not hanging off the bed, and Roda held her breath as her eyes widened in horror. One of his legs kicked, stretching in his sleep, and without thinking she wrapped her hand around the hilt of the knife and seized her chance. Snatching it from the scabbard she tried to use her bodyweight to roll onto her back, tucking the knife against her chest so that she wouldn’t cut herself. But before she could form a plan a strong, familiar hand wrapped around her wrist, threw her exactly where she wanted and _twisted_. With a gasp of pain Roda dropped the knife - watching it fall helplessly down the side of the bed - as Jack straddled her and pinned her to the mattress. Within seconds, there was a gun between her eyes and she swore. Colourfully.

“Not trying to knife one of us, were you, Red?” asked John, blearily. A little too blearily for Roda’s comfort, given the gun he was pointing at her. “After all our hospitality?”

“John…” said Jack, warningly. “The bounty, remember?”

Still holding Roda down he moved, just a little bit, so that his body was between the gun and her head. Roda could only stare, alarm fading at how casually _this_ Jack, someone who considered her almost a complete stranger, would just put himself between his lover and his target without even thinking about it. John was completely forgotten. The mattress shifted as she stayed completely still and Jack unhooked her other wrist from the headboard. She studied his face, _trying_ to understand why he would shield her. If she was nothing more than a mark to him, a target for the Time Agency, then why protect her from someone he clearly trusted a lot more than she did him. But he gave away nothing, his poker face impeccable as he cleared his throat and nodded at her wrists. The gun behind them still locked and loaded Roda held out her now free hand and let Jack cuff them back together in front of her.

None of them moved for what felt like hours; Jack holding Roda down, John’s arm completely steady despite how drunk he’d been earlier and Roda completely at a loss for how to respond. And then just as the pause was starting to drive her crazy and she was about to say something, she heard John sigh with disappointment and toss the gun back to the bedside table.

“Yeah, yeah… You ruin all my fun.”

Jack’s shoulders relaxed and he lay back on the bed, easing off Roda’s hips and pulling her along with him. As he started to maneuverer them both into a more comfortable position, she couldn’t find it in her to resist. John grumbled something about ‘not sharing’ and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, reaching over the side for the bottle Roda had noticed before. He got up, cracked his neck, drank straight from the bottle, slid all of his weapons back into place somewhere on his person and disappeared into the next room with all the swagger of somebody who hadn’t quite sobered up yet. Roda heard running water, and then a minute later the door to the hotel room shut behind him, the locking mechanism clicking into place as the Time Agent went off to Rassilon only knew where. _More_ _‘drink, drugs and shagging’,_ Roda supposed.

Jack tugged Roda across the bed once John was gone, lying on his side on one half of the pillows as he cleared his throat. Roda lifted her head and let him give the other half to her, trying not to think too hard about playing nice, how close together they were, or how badly getting a weapon had gone. Pulling her so that her back was pressed against his bare chest, Jack slung one arm over Roda and switched which hand he was holding her cuffs in so that he was almost embracing her; still holding on tight so that there was no chance in Skaro, this time, that she could move without him noticing. Roda gave a huff (trying to keep up appearances) but let her self sink into familiar muscles, the rise and fall of his chest more comforting than her cheek pressed to a cold wall, curled up in a ball.

“Sorry,” commented Jack, casually. Roda gave a quiet ‘hmm’. “Guess I get to be big spoon.”

“Guess so.”

“Just… try not to have any more bright ideas.” He chuckled into the top of her head. “I need _some_ beauty sleep.”

Roda fought down a wry smile At least she was a lot more comfortable than she’d been before. Held tight with no room to improvise, but at least the cuffs weren’t digging in, anymore. Since she was two for two on failed escape attempts, maybe it’d be for the best if she packed it in for the night and tried again in the morning…


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“There's coffee for those who want it," the Duke said._   
>  **– Frank Herbert, 'Dune'**

**CARDIFF, 2006**

“So... who were they?”

Later on, when Jack asked him what was going through his head when he went to talk to the prisoner on his own, without telling anyone, he would have been hard-pressed to explain himself. Ianto Jones had three jobs at Torchwood; make (excellent) coffee, archive alien artifacts and encounters and – as Jack increasingly informed him, while somehow not making it sound like harassment – look pretty. He certainly wasn’t on the roster for his skill at interrogations, and in fact outside of the odd weevil hunt, he barely dealt with the aliens at all. Strictly rubber gloves and alien tech for him.

And yet here he was, standing in front of their latest visitor's cell with one hand on the gun stowed in his pocket and his other clasping the handle of a striped mug of steaming coffee. _Because Jack said they might fancy a cuppa,_ he told himself. _And I might be an idiot, but I_ do _make the best coffee in Torchwood._

This was mad. If Jack knew what he was planning to do he would have been fired by now. He was still on shaky ground after the fallout from Canary Wharf, after all. _After Lisa_ _…_ But Jack was busy at the moment doing goodness only knew what in his office, and had locked the place down. Tosh was busy checking up on the Rift. Owen was doing something with a cadaver and complaining about being called in on his day off. And Gwen was waiting to see what happened next, while putting off her taxes. No one was paying attention to the Tea Boy. And so until Jack glanced up at the CCTV, or someone noticed that their coffee had gone cold, Ianto was left to his own devices, and thought perhaps he could make himself useful.

Hopefully, this wasn’t the worst decision he had made since… since Lisa. Ianto swallowed, trying not to let his mind go there. He and Gwen had let curiousity get the better of themselves, and had been watching the security feed when Jack first went downstairs. No sound, of course, but even without the woman’s anxiety attack, it had been obvious to Ianto that something was wrong. Not for _them,_ per se. But it was the look in her eyes, one that he knew all too well. That sense of recent loss, warring with denial. More than just shock.

And she looked… lonely. He had seen what Jack - his back to her - and Gwen - talking with Jack on the comms - had missed. An outstretched hand, as though she had been about to ask Jack to wait, before it was snatched back as an afterthought. He’d seen the way her shoulders slumped, and the tears in her eyes as she looked away with a flash of pain, and… definitely anger.

Ianto had watched in silence as she composed herself, pinching the bridge of her nose and lying down on the cot with her back to the glass, and had made a decision there and then. He had tried to catch Jack on his way past to run it by him, but the man had marched to his office and slammed the door, lost in his own thoughts. And beside, what would he say anyway? _‘I know I don’t normally do this bit, but I really need to speak to the alien in the basement?’_ Jack understood loss, but how could Ianto explain the real reason. Talk of Lisa was off-limits.

The alien - Time Lord - hadn’t heard him approaching. She jumped when he spoke, eyes snapping open as she rolled over and reached for where she’d probably had a gun, before Jack had disarmed her. (Tosh had put her equipment to one side, eager to try and puzzle out how it worked. It was like nothing they had in the archives, and half of it didn’t seem to work for anyone of them. Jack had laughed and said something about ‘sonic something-or-other’ and ‘isomorphic’ and Tosh’s eyes had lit up, but it was beyond Ianto’s pay grade.) When she remembered that it was gone and where she was, the Time Lord cautiously stood up. But her expression - when she realised it was him, and not Jack - was more confused than alarmed.

She tipped her head to one side, and Ianto immediately regretted not asking if Time Lords were telepathic when she seemed to look right through him.

“Who are you?”

“I’m…” Ianto hesitated. _Best not say my name._ “I work for Torchwood.” He held up the striped mug with a pleasant smile, putting on his very best Tourist Information voice. “I make the coffee.”

“Then, ah…” The woman pulled a face. She was clearly on guard, expecting a trick. Ianto didn’t blame her; this was probably as weird for her as it was for him. “What are you doing here?” She moved automatically to push her hair out of her eyes, and seemed surprised to find no fringe there. “Was your Captain so busy he sent the coffee boy to dissect me instead?”

Ianto’s eyes widened in shock and horror. “I - _what_? No! I’m not going to-”

“That’s what this place has to be for, isn’t it?” The woman narrowed her eyes. “Like your Area Fifty-something.”

“One.”

Ianto shut his mouth, not sure why he was correcting the potentially _dangerous_ alien.

“Whatever. A place where you humans study aliens. Cut them up, steal their tech. I told your boss with the Agency,” Ianto raised an eyebrow; _what Agency?_ “You’ll get nothing from me.”

“We don't cut people up.” Ianto swallowed. It wasn’t exactly a lie. They didn't cut up _live_ aliens, but it wouldn't be the first time that Owen had taken a knife to one on an autopsy table. She certainly wasn't the first alien to assume that dissection was what would happen to them... perhaps that was something they ought to think about more often. What aliens thought of them. He wondered if Jack knew. “We're not monsters.”

“And I am?” The woman snapped.

“That's not what I meant...” Ianto took a deep breath. He tightened his free hand on the grip of his pistol, wondering if he had made a big mistake, but then slipped his hand from his pocket and held it up to show that it was empty. “I just came to talk.”

“With a gun in your pocket?” _Did she read my mind?_ Ianto opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand and interrupted him. “I can see it on your belt. Your Captain was ready to talk with his gun last time we met, too.”

“He’s not _my_ Captain.”

Ianto tried not to blush, and tried not to think about the implications of what she had just said. He emptied the clip from his gun like Jack had taught him to, slipped it into his pocket, and then carefully placed the gun on the floor on the opposite side of the corridor. _Well out of reach of both of us._ He turned to face the woman again with a raised eyebrow that he hoped had at least _some_ of Jack’s charisma. Raising the coffee again he let his mouth form what was almost a genuine smile, and then shielding the keypad with his body, started to type the lock combination into the panel on the wall. _These doors are so fiddly, but it_ _’s easier than going all the way up and around._

“I mean it. I just want to talk.” The keys made a light _pip pip_ noise as he typed, followed by a triple _beep_ to say the code had been accepted. “You look like you need it.”

“What I need,” the woman growled, though her pose was less hostile, “is to get out of this prison and back to my squadron.”

“That can be arranged,” reassured Ianto, taking a deep breath as the door slid open. “Once we determine you’re not a threat.”

He watched the alien intently, well aware that for all he knew, she was about to charge him, maybe even kill him, and escape into the Hub. _This is a stupid idea,_ he chastised himself, heart racing. _What if she kills you? Kills Gwen, or Tosh, or Owen, or Jack?_ But she didn’t move as he stepped forward and the cell door slid closed behind him, and he held the mug out to her in as steady a grip as he could manage while watching for her next move. She raised her chin - postulating, not threatening - and then tentatively plucked it from his hand after what felt like the longest wait of his life. Letting out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding, Ianto smiled as she clasped it to her chest in both hands, and watched him carefully.

“Does this mean you’ll talk to me?” She opened her mouth to say something, but he talked over her. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” He paused. “But… I get the feeling you need somebody to talk to.”

Ianto waited patiently as the alien inspected the coffee. She sniffed it first, swirling it around in the cup as she stared at it intently. Satisfied at least that it didn’t _smell_ weird (he’d made it black, just in case) she dipped one pinky in - Ianto prepared to wince, given how hot it was - and then licked it off her finger. And then licked a drop off her bottom lip with an expression on her face that almost approached impressed. After a pause she sipped slowly, but still didn’t take her eyes off him. She tilted her head with an appreciative hum, and Ianto felt oddly as though she had judged him, decided he wasn’t a threat and accepted the offering.

Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she granted him an almost apologetic coffee.

“Good coffee.”

He smiled. “I _did_ say I was the coffee boy.”

“Hmm.” She snorted. “But I didn’t like coffee in my last body.”

“In your last…” Ianto shook his head. “Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

When she laughed, it finally sounded genuine. “I thought you wanted me to _talk._ ”

“I meant more about…” he gestured absently with one hand, taking a seat at one end of the cot she had been resting on. After a moment’s hesitation she followed him, sitting cross-legged at the other end and still drinking the coffee. “Well.. you know.”

_Who were they._

“I know…”

The laughter that had broken through the shield just moments ago slipped away like rain on glass. The woman rested her hands on her lap, still wrapped tightly around the mug as she seemed to fish for the words to say. _Or whether or not she_ _’s going to trust me._ For the first time she looked away from him, her shoulders slumping. Ianto could tell his guess was right just from the absence of words, and the way she grazed absently at her bottom lip.

“Her name is - _was_ ,” a slight flinch, “Wicinrondrometa.” Ianto nodded, saying nothing. _And here I thought_ _‘Splot’ was a hard one to say._ “It’s… very traditional. The name, I mean.” The woman frowned to herself. “Everything about Wick was traditional. Traditional family, traditional House, traditional soldier…”

“You served with her?” Ianto guided the questions gently, not wanting to push her. He could recognize the circular answer for what it was; evasion. The woman's voice was the quietest it had been since his arrival.

“Served _under_ her.” She chuckled, sadly. “In more ways than one.”

“You were lovers.”

“Not at _first._ ” The alien looked at him, a curious expression on her face. As if she was looking for his ulterior motive, making sure that he could be trusted with information that was so important to her. He smiled invitingly, hoping he looked safe. “She hated me. Hated everything that I was, Skaro-” Ianto raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar word, “she practically _begged_ Rassilon to assign me to a different Commander. And didn’t I know it, when I first arrived at the barracks. I knew damn well I was being punished and I hated her for it. Hated that she hated me just because…” One hand traced her right forearm, fingers moving in delicate, invisible spirals. “It doesn’t matter.”

Gingerly, Ianto reached out and placed one hand on top of hers. She barely flinched, but it was just enough to notice, and he slowly withdrew his arm before testing the waters and touching the side of her shoulder. When she didn’t move that time he rested his hand there, stroking reassuringly.

“But you didn’t hate her.”

“Oh, I didn’t hate her.” The alien shook her head, seemingly horrified by the idea. “Resented her, maybe… but like I said, she was traditional. Younger than me, but she’d heard all about me like I was some cautionary tale.” She snorted bitterly. “Don’t fly too close to the suns, or your TARDIS will burn.” Ianto nodded; he could get the gist of the parable. “So… no, I didn’t hate her. And over the years, we learned to live with each other. War…” she hesitated, taking another drink of the coffee. “War has a way of putting things into perspective.”

“So I’ve been told.”

It was something Jack mentioned, from time to time. Never in many words, and usually around Remembrance Day. _And then there was the Battle of Canary Wharf_ _…_ Ianto swallowed, and nodded again.

“I never rose up the ranks,” continued the woman, nose wrinkling. “They didn’t trust me. Once an outlaw,” hadn’t Jack called her a criminal? “Always an outlaw, and all that… but Wick didn’t treat me like a ticking time bomb. She expected me to act just like any other soldier under her command, and we were in an elite squadron, so Rassilon help us if any one of us made a mistake. That was more important to her.” The woman sighed, and a fond smile spread across her face. “She was following orders, having me on her team. She expected me to follow mine. There were Daleks to kill, no time to have it out and no sense in blowing my chance to fight in the War. If I put one foot out of line...” She shook her head, smile fading. “Wick would have dealt with it. Until Polymos was destroyed.”

Ianto winced appropriately. “Your home… planet?”

Her laugh was so loud and so sudden that it caught Ianto off guard. He tensed, ready to jump to his feet, but she simply wiped her eyes and shook her head. _No, then._ Letting out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding in Ianto relaxed his shoulders.

She didn't seem dangerous so far. _Famous last words, perhaps,_ but maybe she wasn't the woman that Jack thought she was. Scared, though she was hiding it. Hurt, definitely. But dangerous? Maybe she had the potential, but Ianto didn’t feel like she was going to do anything to him unless he did something to her, first.

“Rassilon's balls, no! But we were on the tail of a Time Destructor. We stole the taranium core centuries ago,” she paused, biting her bottom lip, “might have been the Doctor himself, actually,” Ianto raised an eyebrow, “but the point was, the Time Lords had a functional replica. But Rassilon wanted the real thing, and we sure as Skaro didn't want the Daleks having it anymore. With Davros dead,” Ianto nodded along, trying to make a mental note of what she was telling him, but half of the words didn't make any sense, “we thought that they wouldn't be able to make another. We could...” she went pale, “we could use it against them. But the operation went wrong.”

“Is that how it happened?”

“No, this was…” The alien finished the coffee, placing the mug down on the side of the cot as she curled her fingers into her palms, counting. “Well, more than two hundred years ago, anyway.” Ianto blinked. She looked to be in her late twenties, or early thirties. _Could she really be more than two hundred years old?_ “But anyway, like I said it went wrong. Very wrong. Half of our squadron were caught in the temporal wave...”

The woman went very pale, and very quiet. Her hands were limp in her lap, and Ianto instantly regretted prying. _Half of our squadron_ _…_ how big was a squadron, in this war of hers? How many people had she seen die in an instant? How long ago was two hundred years, when you could count it on your fingers so casually? Even if he didn’t understand more than half of the words she was using - taranium, Rassilon, temporal wave, Polymos - he wasn’t an idiot. She was answering the question he’d asked - who did you lose? Who were they, told in the only way she knew how. And he could feel the loss and the love and the respect the Time Lord had, in her words. _What more had happened, in the last_ _…_ and he couldn’t believe he was thinking this… _two hundred or more years?_

They sat in a companionable silence for the longest time, as the Time Lord (so unlike all he’d heard of the Doctor) succumbed to her thoughts. When she finally cleared her throat, though, she didn’t seem to want to go into anymore details.

“Anyway… Wick lost her TARDIS. She needed someone, and no one else knew what to say to the Commander, but I never really gave a damn about rank.” Ianto laughed. “So I let her talk.”

He gave a knowing nod, a blush reaching his face as he thought about Jack. _And here I thought this would have me talking about_ _… well, someone else._ “That at least I understand.”

The alien raised an eyebrow, and then glanced over his shoulder towards the stairs. “Your Captain?”

“He’s not my…” Ianto scrunched up his nose. “It’s-”

“Complicated.” She finished his sentence for him, and Ianto nodded. “I know what you mean…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rule of thumb: if a planet got screwed over, chances are it was the Time Lord's and/or the Dalek's fault... Also, for those wondering this story is set between episodes 5 and 6 of Torchwood Season 1.
> 
> This is _probably_ the only chapter of the story that's going to be from Ianto's POV, but I also typically don't like just using one different angle, so his might crop up again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You chase me. I don't chase anyone.”_   
>  **― Avijeet Das**

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, The 51st Century**

She woke up alone.

Once she’d given up on trying to escape, Roda had apparently gone out like a candle. Daylight broke through the small window, and she brought her hands up over her eyes to shield them from the glare with a grimace and a groan before realising that nobody was holding her, anymore.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or a bad one.

The Time Lady lay on her back for a good couple of minutes, trying to formulate a plan. Making a run for it was probably stupid; even if there was no one in the room _with_ her, the two Time Agents were probably in the next one over, and if she tried something stupid again she might not be so lucky as she had been the night before. And besides, she was stiff from all of the grappling, and didn’t feel like making an idiot of herself with some harebrained scheme. _Not_ , she mused, _that half of my schemes aren_ _’t harebrained to begin with. But usually I don’t get caught._

She was alive, no one was pointing a gun at her, and if she was a little bit more clever this time, then she’d manage to get away next time, she was sure. After all, there was a twenty first century Captain Jack Harkness back in Cardiff who’d been in _suff_ erably smug about the fact that the Time War had thrown her through the Rift and right into his custody, and so far nothing seemed to have jeopardized that future overly much except for _Roda_ not thinking before she acted. And so if for no other reason than not causing a paradox to come crashing down on her head Roda simply lay on the plush bed, stared at the ceiling and wondered what the day would bring. If she played nice with her captors, it might even start off by bringing coffee.

There were at least a few cards still in her favour. Jack, it seemed - she decided she’d keep calling him that, and so far he seemed happy to play along - wanted to bring her in alive, rather than dead. That was very important, and tied her conscience in all kinds of knots that made her shake her head in despair. _Jack the Time Agent isn_ _’t allowed to make me feel guilty like that; only Jack the Torchwood operative._ But she could guess why he was so insistent on taking her in without too much of a scene. If her escape all those years ago had anything to do with the memories he’d had taken from him, then perhaps he thought finding her would redeem him in the Agency’s eyes. And even if her suspicions were false - and she sincerely hoped they _were_ \- then she imagined he probably didn’t want to be shouting ‘we’ve got the Redjay in custody’ all over the Boeshane Peninsula. After all, the Time Agency was less a police force than most of the groups who had reason to bring her in for questioning, and more like a roving band of mercenaries with a headquarters. They were just as likely to kill each other to bring in a bounty as they were to kill her, from all that Roda had heard, and the last day had done _nothing_ at all to quench the rumours that they were all a bunch of hedonistic opportunists.

Better yet, there was the broken vortex manipulators. Both men could no doubt work without them, but she imagined they felt about as naked as she would feel stranded without her TARDIS. And unable to teleport easily from time to time and place to place meant that they’d have to find some sort of interstellar transport to get her back to HQ. Transport that could take anything from a day to a couple of weeks, unless they had money to throw around; and if they had to make any kind of connections along the way, then moving her would be Roda’s best chance at escape. ‘Course, if they got to another planet before she _did_ then she’d have to call in a _lot_ of favours to get out of the Peninsula and back to her TARDIS without being dragged kicking and screaming back into custody, but she wasn’t without connections. No particularly honest ones nearby, granted, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it, if she did. _And if I get desperate,_ she thought, wrinkling her nose at the idea, _Glitz would sell his own_ mother _for some of the things I could give him from the depths of my TARDIS._ But she might get desperate. It was something to think about.

Apart from that, though, her hands were tied - literally. She’d not brought her bow, Jack had her revolver, and the toolkit that he’d confiscated from her didn’t have much in it that could double as a weapon even in a pinch. The sonic callipers, perhaps, but they were a blunt object more than anything else. (She _had_ used them to break a security guard’s nose once, in a pinch, but it hadn’t been pretty, or easy. Or good for her criminal record. _Or effective,_ she supposed, _since it wound up on record at all._ ) The things she’d stolen to do the job she _had_ come to do might have been useful, but Jack had taken them, and if he hadn’t ditched them he’d destroyed them. _So I_ _’ll have to improvise, in handcuffs. Great._

“Coffee?”

Spreading her fingers in cuffs, Roda shot Jack the jazz hands in response.

“Cuffs?” With a wink, the Time Agent opened the drawer of the nearby table, and Roda’s jaw almost dropped as he withdrew the key. “…no.”

“Yep. Getting rusty?” He laughed as Roda sat up, and he undid the cuffs with a grin. “Or did you just _let_ me catch you?”

“It’s a work in progress.”

“Right.” Jack handed her the coffee, and Roda balanced it on her knee as she rubbed her wrists. “Well, if I were you I’d keep making it easy.” She raised an eyebrow as Jack’s tone darkened. “Time Agency’s been looking for you for a long time.”

And just like that, the bottom dropped out of Roda’s stomach. She gripped the cup of coffee as her eyes narrowed, and took a long, steadying drink. She’d lulled herself into a false sense of security. Maybe she was fine for _now_ , but she was still in the custody of the Time Agency. People who - the last time they had crossed paths - had bound her, tortured her and interrogated her in the hopes of giving up information that there was no way she could give them. To try and force her to give up the location of something she - still - hadn’t stolen. They were willing to do that to her even though they’d made a mistake, even though she was _innocent._ Willing, even, to _shoot_ her; despite the fact that she was innocent. But just like Rassilon, they’d had an agenda, and no amount of truth or reality had apparently been able to sway them from it. Rassilon had wanted to throw her into the Oubliette of Eternity to be forgotten; would letting the Time Agency have _their_ way have been any easier? It was too late to know now, but at the time she’d felt punished just for being a scared young Time Lady. And without a good story to tell them now, the Agency would likely be ready to do it all again as soon as Jack handed her over to them. _And they_ _’ll be worse than the judoon._

The small talk dried up as the threat - or warning - hung between them. Jack watched her silently for a couple of minutes, leaning on the wall beside the counter. At one point he commented, as if as an afterthought, that John had gone out, and that they’d drawn straws on who got to watch her. Less at ease, Roda hadn’t risen to the bait. John being out probably meant that they were figuring out how to move her, which meant being free and drinking coffee probably wouldn’t last for long. When she’d not replied he’d given up on conversation and simply drank his own brew, never taking his gaze off her as he fiddled with his damaged vortex manipulator and seemed to be trying to get it to at least tell the time again.

Roda studied her knees and tried to keep her hearts from racing. She wondered where his partner was, and if it was only a matter of time until she was back in that nightmare again, no matter what her Jack had said. And she wondered what she was willing to do to _this_ Jack, if the fear got too much.

“So,” asked Roda, holding out the paper cup so that Jack could take it from her, stretching limbs that still hadn’t quite woken up. Jack didn’t stop her from standing up, walking around the room to get feeling back into her legs. _We both know I_ _’m not stupid enough to make a break for it._ “What’s _your_ story?”

Jack gave her a curious look. “My story?”

“Why join the Agency?” She waved a hand up and down his body, pushing through with the flirting before he could get suspicious at the line of questioning. “With a face like yours, you could have pretty much any job in the sector.”

“Is this an interrogation,” he asked with a smirk, “or a pick-up?”

“I’m just saying!” Roda threw up her hands in a gesture of mock surrender, smiling and pushing her hair from her face. “There can’t be many perks to the job. Not to mention the danger…"

“Pay’s alright.”

“Alright,” she stressed, pulling a face. “But you could be doing better.”

Jack raised an eyebrow at her. “And this pep talk’s coming from a thief-”

“Borrower. Sometimes.”

“Hacker-”

“Look,” said Roda, wrinkling her nose, “it’s very rarely _actually_ hacking. Most people call any security bypass a hack.”

“Mmhm.” But Jack wasn’t done. “And the con-artistry?”

“So far as _your_ lot know,” she sniffed, “that was _one_ time.”

“Forgery?”

“Much easier to cover your tracks if people don’t know they’re looking for them until they’ve faded.”

“Temporal interference?”

Roda could only stare. “My people _invented_ time travel,” she pointed out, indignantly, “and _your_ people bastardized it for profit!”

“That hurts.”

“S’the truth.” She folder her arms over her chest, more than a little petulantly. This bickering wasn’t _exactly_ how she had imagined fishing for information to go, after all. “My TARDIS can take more than a kicking, too.”

“Look,” interrupted Jack, who - from the look on his face - was evidently trying not to laugh out loud and on the brink of failing, “I’m just saying that _you_ _’re_ the criminal here. I think it’s meant to be my job to lecture _you_ about a change of career.”

“I _like_ what I do.” Roda shrugged exaggeratedly. “It doesn’t take a telepath to know that _you_ probably don’t.”

At first, she thought it might have been a poke too much. Jack’s back stiffened, and he fixed her with a look as she felt his mind feeling at the edge of hers, trying to decide if she was reading his. Her barriers were sound enough that a Time Agent was going to get nowhere, and since she _hadn_ _’t_ been reading anything but his behaviour she simply looked right back at him, and rested her jaw in one hand. Satisfied, Jack let down his hackles and stood up from the wall, walking across the room to nowhere in particular. Roda knew that habit; it meant that he was thinking. Mulling over what she’d said in his mind. She’d simply been trying to work out where in his timeline he was - if he was at the stage where he’d begun to pull away from the Agency or not - but clearly she’d struck something. It could just be the beginning of bitterness about the missing memories, or it could be that there was something he’d not told her about his old job, before. It wasn’t as though he was particularly forthcoming about his nebulous past. As a rule, he was content enough to brag about the fun days, and tended to change the subject when the bad ones came up. _Which, really, I can_ _’t blame him for. But what don’t I know about you, Jack…_ Though she had always been able to see the agent and the soldier in him, it felt like a uniform and not a skin. She had always wondered what had gotten him into the Agency.

“The Face of Boe.” Roda’s eyes darted back and forth as she tried to remember if that name rang any bells. She shook her head, clueless. “It was a competition. Sort of a pageant.”

“You’re changing the subject,” she accused, testing the waters by standing up. Jack didn’t stop her, but he turned around to face her as he kept on talking regardless.

“I needed the money and, well,” his eyes twinkled, “as you were kind enough to point out, I’ve got the face for it.” _Jack_ _… entered a pageant._ Roda sat down again, on the edge of the now-abandoned counter, making a mental note to ask her Jack about that when she got back. _Maybe he_ _’ll demonstrate his catwalk strut for me if I ask nicely enough._ “And I was _good_ at it. Walked the walk, talked the talk. I was _especially_ good at the lingerie bits.” Jack winked. “An audience favourite. The classic rags to riches story of a nobody from the Outer Rim, making his way in,” he smirked, “ and _through_ the Big City.”

“And what,” Roda tipped her head to one side. “First place was a cash prize and a job offer from the Agency?”

“I’m just that special _._ ” Roda stared. “Didn’t plan it at the time of course, but apparently the kind of cutthroat skills you need to win a beauty pageant in the city go hand in hand with the Time Agency. Make-up, camouflage, acting…” He grinned. “Breaking out of handcuffs - while scantily clad - in the talent contest,” Roda rolled her eyes, “now _that_ put the Satellite’s ratings through the roof.”

“Let me guess. Your briefs slipped?”

“Briefs? Sweet-cheeks, you should see me in a thong. Everyone _else_ has.” Despite herself, Roda laughed. “So’d a couple of big-wigs in the Time Agency, and wouldn’t you have it, their image wasn’t doing too great.”

“It still isn’t.” Roda’s eyes trailed up and down Jack as he pouted at her. “Present company not included.”

“Thanks. I think. So, long story short I come out of the contest the prettiest face in the Boeshane Peninsula. No trouble finding a couch to crash on after _that_. Couple of days later, who shows up but Time Agency recruitment with an exclusive contract to plaster my face all over the capital for twice the money Satellite Five was giving me and a vortex manipulator with my name on it.” He paused. “A vortex manipulator that HR is _not_ going to be happy to see in pieces.”

 _And I guess he never did get it properly fixed, since my Jack_ _’s is still broken. Or he just broke it again._ Either way, Roda made a mental note to fix it for her Jack when she got back to the right time. If she could, anyway. The teleport system couldn’t be _that_ different to a rudimentary TARDIS demat system, after all. It’d be something to do on long stake-outs with no weevils to chase down. Honestly, she was beginning to wonder why she’d not tried to fix it before; tweaking something like that had been a favourite hobby, once upon a time. And the challenge would be a lot of fun, not to mention the chance to work out what Time Agency tech did so she could work around it in the future. (Not, she supposed, that she was supposed to be doing that anymore. But surely Torchwood wouldn’t last forever.)

“I’d say I’m sorry…” Roda spread out her hands apologetically. “But, I’m not.”

“Fair.”

“But my point is…” Roda tipped her head to one side. “You’ve got all that talent, and you’re wasting it.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to tempt me to use my powers for evil?” He appraised her. “Because if so, you need to work a little on your villainous pitch. Right now it’s a bit too career adviser.”

She would have thumped her Jack. This time, it didn’t exactly seem like a bright idea. But it was interesting to get to know this side of Jack, and see what made him tick. He wasn’t hers, yet… but he also wasn’t the Time Agent who’d first caused her to regenerate, centuries ago. Or at least if he was, he did a good job of hiding that side of him. Something had changed - the stolen memories, she supposed - and she could tell he was at least _listening_ to her, well, meddling. He’d been talking a lot of talk about how the Agency would be happy to get her back, and how he was just doing his job. But then, he’d also stopped his colleague from shooting her, even if he _had_ had ulterior motives. It would be stupid of Roda to let her guard down completely, but was there a chance that she could weasel under Jack’s skin, and use that to get out of this situation? After all, she remembered what Jack had said to her when she had joined Torchwood. He’d seemed to think that they’d be ready friends, but the only thing that suggested that so far from their meeting _yesterday_ was that Roda had said so.

Jack seemed like too pragmatic a man to decide to make friends with someone dangerous - and despite it all, she was someone dangerous - just because they’d told him it’d happen. _She_ certainly hadn’t believed it, at first.

“Forget it,” she said, with a sigh, shaking her head. _Pick your battles. Just don_ _’t write him off, or he’ll never be your Jack._ Forcing a grin, she changed tactics. “Then again, you have _me_ in your secret lair.”

“Motel.”

“And your trousers are _criminally_ tight,” persisted Roda, smirking. “So I’d say right now you’re the villain, not me.”

“And you’re looking at my trousers because…?”

“I think you know why I’m looking at your trousers.”

Jack chuckled. “If you think you can flirt your way out of a sentence, I’d stop wasting your time.”

Roda licked her lips. “Who said I wanted to flirt my way _out_ of something? Maybe getting captured was all part of the plan.”

One second he was across the room, and the next he was standing between her legs where they dangled off the counter. Roda’s eyes widened - _what did I do wrong, what did I say?_ \- and her heart began to race, before Jack gripped her chin, tilted it up and without further warning, kissed her. Hard. For a second Roda’s mind short-circuited, and she put one hand on Jack’s chest, not certain if she wanted _more_ or wanted to push him away. _He isn_ _’t your Jack,_ she reminded herself. _But,_ said another voice in her mind, _he_ _’s still just as hot._

But the moment passed as quickly as it happened. As Roda tried to catch her breath Jack took looked down at her, smugness written all over his face. Roda searched for the words that she wanted to say, and found that they were utterly and completely gone.

“ _Whatever_ your plan was,” said Jack, sultrily, “ _no one_ can sex-appeal me. But you’re welcome to give it a try. Maybe you’d like it.”

As Jack left her sitting on the counter alone beside the coffee machine trying to figure out what had just happened, she decided that he was certainly right about that. At least _some_ thing never changed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.”_   
>  **― Kent M. Keith**

**CARDIFF, 2006**

It felt to Rodageitmososa as though she and the human spoke for hours. It probably hadn't even been _one_. Her sense of time was off, as if there was something missing from the universe, and she didn’t yet know what.

But she couldn't wrap her head around the human. What was his angle? _Why ask me about Wick?_ Had he been told to? She had the feeling not; he seemed genuine in his desire to listen, and this ‘Torchwood’ place felt more like a prison cell to her than therapy. But who were they - an earthbound branch of the Time Agency? Not in the twenty first century, but then she’d recognized the so-called ‘Captain’ from the Boeshane Peninsula. _Centuries too early, though, even for them. Even with the War; and they_ _’d be idiots to want to get involved, anyway._

Nothing made sense. Not why she was here in custody, and _especially_ not when the last thing that she remembered was being surrounded by an entire fleet of Daleks, TARDIS not functioning, holding off a regeneration while she tried to trigger a temporal mine to take out a few of the bastards when they managed to kill her. (After all that, if this Torchwood had done more damage to her TARDIS, she felt as though she could tear them apart. The only reason she wasn’t already in a blind panic was that she could feel her ship’s signature, at the back of her mind. It’s absence would feel like the loss of a limb.) And yet here she was, talking to a stranger about the Commander. Trying desperately to give him what he wanted, and failing miserably to pretend that this wasn't what she needed.

The guilt was eating away at her from the inside. Not just that she was here and Wick was... Wick was not, but that she hadn't knocked him out the moment he'd opened the door to her cell and run. _I should be trying to get back to Karn, back to everyone else. Not that there were many of us left._ Instead, she was here talking to a complete stranger, drinking a mug of coffee, letting everybody down. Not getting back to the War without a moment's hesitation.

Roda had never been an especially patriotic person, even before her exile. She’d always felt that there was something deeply flawed about Gallifrey; about the way it was run, the way that half its people starved, and the corruption within the Council. She had been told all of her life that as a Time Lord, it was her duty to be better, but had watched with confusion as everybody around her took for granted that all it _took_ to be better was, in fact, being a Time Lord. And it had never made sense. But when the War had broken out and every Time Lord had been press ganged into serving, Roda had immediately volunteered. It was one thing to think your home was broken; quite another to let it be destroyed before it could be fixed.

She shook her head, tired out from regenerating, and tired of war. The stranger - who had introduced himself, in the end, as Ianto Jones - had made a tempting offer that she’d been too exhausted to refuse. A listening ear. A warm drink. Somewhere that she could sleep for the first time in what felt like months without the sound of battle waging on around her. It was a prison, and while she knew that she should want nothing more than to be out of it… _well, what else can I do?_ But letting her guard down and resting when she knew that she couldn’t share that down time with Wick felt wrong. Empty.

And so she’d found herself telling Ianto everything. How they had lost half their squadron on Polymos – she spared him the gruesome details – and the toll it had taken on Wick's pride, and on her hearts. How Roda had stayed with her that night as she wrote her report, and how she'd held her hand when she was ordered to the Nursery to replace a TARDIS that had been a part of her since the day that she'd graduated from the Academy.

 _If I ever lost mine,_ Roda thought, _I don_ _’t even think I could go on._ But then, she had grown her TARDIS since she was a Tot, and was closer to it than more traditional Time Lords were. Yet Wick, the most traditional Time Lord that Roda could stand, had felt the loss as keenly as she would have herself. And there had been nothing that Roda could have done or said that would have been enough to fix the pain but how it had patched things over, between them.

She couldn't bring herself to tell him about the freckles on Wick's face, or the beautiful colour of her dark skin and the way that no matter what she did to her hair, it always escaped out the sides of her regulation-issue helmet. Closing her eyes as she spoke she could remember the way that Wick's hands felt on her body, both staunching bleeding and coaxing soft, low moans out of her, sometimes on the same day. She could hear Wick's voice in her ear and when he touched her arm, it was Wick's hands in his place; stupid, selfless Wick, telling her it was okay. Reassuring her, right up to the moment that she had -

“Step away from him and put your hands on your head – now!”

The brief companionship, the raft in the middle of her sea of stress, came crashing down as quickly as it had settled in. She hadn't even noticed the door sliding open behind them. Roda froze, making eye contact with the human on the bench in front of her as his eyes widened in something that was not quite horror, but instead guilt and embarrassment. He scrambled to his feet, almost like a child caught reading something dirty (Roda tried not to feel hurt) and shot her an apologetic look. A second later he was yanked half off his feet and out of the way by the Time Agent as he stormed back into the room, his pistol balanced on the edge of his hand.

She put her hands on the back of her head almost as an afterthought, in no particular mood to get shot. _Though, with Wick gone, what do I_ really _have to lose?_ Her eyes narrowed as she glared at the Captain/Time Agent, hating the position that he’d put her in. Noticing her movements, Ianto opened his mouth to say something, and either thought better of it or was beaten to the punch by his superior.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“She needed-” he waved a hand at her, “I mean, she looked-”

“She's a dangerous criminal, Ianto!” The man's voice was strained, as though he was forcing himself to say words that needed to be said. Even through her anger Roda could see the care he had for Ianto, putting himself between the two of them as though it was the most natural thing. “You could have been killed!”

The coffee mug had been knocked over in the fuss. It laid on its side on the floor, oblivious to the action unfolding around it. Right now, Roda envied the mug. The tension in the air could have been cut with a knife.

“But I wasn’t.”

“Am I not allowed to _talk_ to people, now?”

“Upstairs,” the Time Agent half snarled at Ianto, ignoring Roda, “now.” When his companion didn't move, he added: “that's an order.” He paused. “We'll discuss this later.”

“….Yes, Sir.”

Ianto shot Roda one last ‘sorry’ look before obediently turning to leave. Roda watched him go, and once he was out of sight returned her attention to the gun that she noticed, with some surprise, was pointed not at her head but at her chest. Where her hearts were. _So he remembers that I_ _’m a Time Lord, then. Fantastic._ She snorted. Hundreds of years since their last meeting and it had come back to this; a Time Agent pointing a gun at a Time Lady. At least this time she knew what she was being accused of. ‘Talking’.

Any comfort she’d felt talking to Ianto disappeared as soon as he was gone from the room. Roda’s eyes narrowed, and she ventured the idea of lowering her arms, but thought better of it as the Time Agent closed the distance between them and jerked the gun in her direction. She stayed completely still, head held high. After all; he’d killed her before.

There was something she remembered her professors telling her back in the Time Academy – you always remember your first regeneration. Looking at the man now, the distance in his eyes, it hurt all over again to imagine that there was even the slightest chance that her death was little more than just a cross on the calendar of his life. He had shot her once; what was there to stop him doing it again? The memory of that death was imprinted on her mind as clearly as though it had happened yesterday. But the thought crossed her mind that he might not even remember pulling the trigger.

“If I was going to hurt him,” she snapped, eyes growling with anger, “don’t you think I would have done it already?”

She'd been young. Far too young. She'd only stopped in at the Boeshane Peninsula to refuel her TARDIS. There was a handy little rift in vortex – not as big as the one on Sol-3 of course, but considerably less conspicuous for it as well. And besides she'd heard plenty of stories about fifty first century near-humans and so fresh from the Academy, she'd wanted to know how many of them were true and which were pure fantasy. She'd never thought that there was any reason for the Time Agency to be keeping an eye on _this_ particular face, let alone that she'd barely step foot out of her TARDIS before being assaulted by a Time Agent and a pair of handcuffs.

With a gun to the side of her head, she'd panicked, lashing out – they'd shouted words at her that, at the time, had made no sense to the young Gallifreyan – and the next thing she'd remembered she was cuffed to a metal table sitting across from the man standing in front of her now. He was younger then, too, but not much so. At least, not in his appearance. But his eyes seemed to have aged him almost as much as hers. He'd thrown questions at her like a master pitcher, disorientating her and accusing her until she barely remembered her own name. What is your real name? Why did you target the Bank of the Colonies? Where did you hide the money? What did you plan to do with it? It had meant nothing to him that she'd practically begged that he had the wrong person, and had no answers for his hundreds of questions.

The interrogation had taken days. No one had ever warned her about the Time Agency. Their methods made the Celestial Intervention Agency look like flubbles. For the first time since graduation she'd wanted nothing more than to go home to Gallifrey and curl up in her father's library until her bones stopped aching.

He’d kept calling her 'Redjay'; she hadn’t known who that was, not back then. She hadn't spoken, hadn't given them anything. At the time she'd felt proud but there had been nothing to say. The Redjay was nothing to her. A faceless vigilante that she'd never heard before who had, so it had seemed, framed her for a crime that she hadn't committed. She'd never robbed the Bank of the Colonies simply because she wasn't that stupid. _And I hadn_ _’t become a thief yet, anyway._ But even if she had been, why target a major temporal bank based in the same city as the Time Agency when there were a million safer places to steal from? Why risk her life like that?

And then when they’d been transferring her from cell to cell, that strange Gallifreyan had turned up and told her to run. _Not that I_ _’ve been able to find him since._ After that, all she remembered was pain, and stumbling back to her TARDIS. To safety, to Gallifrey. If she’d known that her life as she knew it would end that day, perhaps she’d have stayed and let them kill her.

“That’s not the point,” insisted the Time Agent, not lowering his weapon for a second. By now they were so close that Roda could have reached out and snatched his gun, if she’d been certain she could manage it before he pulled the trigger. She wasn’t. Maybe if she hadn’t just regenerated… but not right now. “I can't take any chances with my men.”

“Your men?” She could have laughed, running her hands through the hair at the back of her head as she raised her voice in anger. This regeneration was weird. Her hair was too long, she was too short, and her voice was too... feminine. It was awful. She resented having to stand on her toes to look the Time Agent in the eye and she knew that the angrier she got, the more tired she would become. The regeneration was still in process; she felt like she could sleep for a century. “What could I possibly do to him - you took _everything_!? Are the good little soldiers not allowed to play when the Captain’s away?”

He almost smirked. “I don’t like people playing with my stuff.”

“I’m not your stuff,” she snapped, darkly.

“Well,” it was somewhat strained, but he had _definitely_ smirked. “Maybe you’d _like_ it if you tried it.”

“If you’re going to shoot me again,” she said, quietly, “then quit flirting and pull the trigger.”

They stayed like that for the longest time. Roda could hear his heart beating in time with both of hers, and all three were racing like greyhounds. _Neither of us,_ Roda realised, slowly, _are who we used to be. Neither of us were soldiers, before._ But she could see in the Time Agent a caution that he hadn’t had before, and a stiff back. It wasn’t just that he’d been trained how to hold a gun and when to pull the trigger - he had experience. And that look in his eyes, she noted again, that told her he’d seen and done things that he would rather forget. _He probably sees the same thing in me._

He seemed to be studying her in turn, trying to come to a decision. Roda tried to remind herself that he hadn’t drawn a gun before, even though he’d made it clear to her that he _had_ one. It was only when he’d thought that Ianto was in danger that he’d come in and raised his voice. Before he had been patient, even playful. She scolded herself for raising her hackles without thinking. In that sense, he reminded her of Wick. Always worried about the people who she was responsible for. And if he remembered that she was a criminal, that she was someone who had escaped Time Agency custody before, then he had every right to be as unsure about her as she was at him.

 _And even if you don_ _’t believe_ him _, Ianto used the word_ _‘Torchwood’, too. Maybe this really_ isn’t _the Time Agency_ _…_

The tension slipped away as the Captain took a step back, and lowered his arm so that his pistol was aimed at the ground. His brow furrowed in thought, or… confusion. Roda kept one eye on the gun and one on his face, trying to read the expression.

“The last,” he said, slowly, stressing the words, “and _only_ time we met…” It seemed as though he was testing the waters, deciding how much to share. “You nearly killed me.”

Roda’s eyes narrowed, but she kept her mouth shut. She remembered it _very_ differently. But the man hesitated, and then holstered his gun again, letting his jacket cover it and holding up his hands. Roda was about to ask a question before he suddenly reached out for her hand with an air of authority, holding it in his. Willing herself not to flinch Roda stood still - her other hand falling away from behind her head - as he pressed her fingertips against his temples, and looked her in the eye.

From the way that he reached out to her, Roda could tell that she wasn’t the only Time Lord he’d met before; and then it struck her immediately that he’d known one so intimately that he knew exactly what moves to make, and how to make her believe what he said. Time Agents had basic telepathy, that much she _knew._ But it was practical at best. She could feel his nerves even without it, but he was opening his mind, and making an offering that she was too curious to turn down. It was so intimate that she almost wanted to turn away, and yet… and yet…

“Before that,” he continued, closing his eyes, inviting her to listen to the truth, “I have no memory of you at all.”

Roda’s eyes widened with surprise and before she could talk herself out of it, she rested her forehead against his and dove into his open mind. As she searched for the memories that he wanted to show her, trying not to pry in places she wasn’t wanted, one thing leapt out at her as clear as daylight.

He wasn’t lying.

He _really_ didn’t remember…


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other until it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood -- blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.”_   
>  **― Spike, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't often get carried away with the descriptive tags, but I felt like I had to add 'John Hart's sexuality' in here, because... well, it'll make sense. And no, it's not a poodle. Also, strong language warning for this chapter - sort of just slipped out. I reckon 'cause John's... crude.
> 
> His POV got me out of my word block, though! Even if this chapter kind of deviated from anything much important, I like it! Bit of a character study and Roda gets to be an arse, for once.
> 
> And bear with me with the 'Jack's. I wasn't quite sure what else to do, here.

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, The 51st Century**

Not every capture was an immediate success, but John Hart was beginning to feel as though this one, in particular, was a clusterfuck.

It had begun with his partner’s sentimentality. _'Jack'_ , he had started to think of him in his head. Not his real name (or whatever his real name was) or the name that he’d been going by for the past few years. The name that _she_ had given him. And John had started to think of him by the same name as well, and even… _'Jack'_ was wearing it like it was a skin he’d worn for his entire life. But no. John kicked a stone so hard that it skittered across the road and hit a lamp post with a thud. In swans the blessed Redjay, a _wanted_ criminal, no better and perhaps even worse than either of them were… and _his_ partner had to go and develop a conscience.

It was sickening. But there was something about her, something that didn’t add up. John kept on walking down the streets as the city woke up for the morning, running it over in his mind. From what he knew of her case-file (he hadn’t exactly read much of it, trusting 'Jack' to tell him what actually mattered) she and 'Jack' had history. _Bad_ history. 'Jack' had been the Time Agent assigned to interrogating her back in the day, and it was part of the reason that they’d taken two years of his memories. But it was there in the file. 'Jack' had shot her, her buddy had shot him, and somehow _nobody_ in the Time Agency had noticed her simply walk out the front door. _I’d be impressed if it wasn’t so fucking_ ridiculous, _really_. _Can’t trust anyone to do their job right in this company._

Except… with all of that in the past, you’d think the woman’d be more abrasive. Instead she was practically hip-to-hip with 'Jack' and trying not to show it. _Or trying_ not _to, or whatever. I can get the appeal._ And she called him ‘'Jack'’, even though that wasn’t his name, and made out that she knew him. Was there something in the missing memories that they didn’t know about? Or was this some Time Lord bullshit or another?

The last Time Lord he’d met had been a lot more entertaining. Over and over and over again, they’d been entertaining alright. Giving _and_ taking.

 _Whatever._ Sooner he got a car they could move her in, sooner they could dump her and get back to the fun shit. Or maybe 'Jack’d' lose his patience and just let him shoot her already. Red was definitely her colour, after all. He still didn’t get what _'Jack'_ saw in her, though; sure she was good-looking, he’d certainly hit that given the chance, but if she’d got 'Jack' shot _and_ in trouble with the Agency then it was hard to see why he’d want to protect her. So was that her ploy? Make him think she knew something about his missing years, keep him on his toes and make him her knight in shining armour? It wasn’t a _bad_ idea, but it was frustrating. 'Jack' was his. Not hers. _His._

He tried to put his frustration to the back of his mind, focusing instead on the task he’d actually been sent out for as he took a swig from the bottle of absinthe dangling between his fingertips. 'Jack' wanted him to get a vehicle so they could get to the star-port, and get to HQ at the Capitol. Apparently holding up a bus and waving their credentials about was out of the picture, but renting a car was so… _civilian._ They were Time Agents. And so John continued scanning the cars on the street outside the cheap motel, looking for something both fun and quick to drive. Because if they were going to have to do this the long way, he was at least going to get _some_ kind of a rush out of it. And it’d piss 'Jack' off, which was an added bonus. Prick deserved it.

He took another drink of his absinthe, emptying the bottle, and then smashed it in a million tiny pieces. He watched the glass go up like a little nuclear bomb, each shard catching the morning sun, until something else caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. John grabbed for his gun, expecting competition, or local law enforcement, or someone equally boring. Instead, what he saw made him smile for the first time since that shag he and 'Jack' had had on the couch while their quarry was sleeping.

The Time Agent holstered his gun, ran his hands through his hair and popped up his collar with a smirk.

“Oh, you are _beautiful_ …!”

***

“You know as well as I do that this _isn’t_ what I meant!”

It was the kind of car that John would happily have sex in (while driving it, of course). _Hell,_ it was the kind of car he would have sex _with_ given half the chance. And he didn’t give a damn what 'Jack' thought, he was going to _enjoy_ driving it. He was very much going to enjoy driving it.

'Jack', of course, was unimpressed. No doubt he was thinking words like ‘conspicuous’ and ‘stolen’ which were such petty, simple words because no matter what they did, so long as they got their mark in the Time Agency would make all of their problems go away. (Or shot her, which was - he had been told - the less preferable response, because it was bloody hard if not impossible to get information off a corpse. But _technically_ her case-file said ‘dead or alive’ which meant that if she pissed him off, it wasn’t exactly off the table.) And so they might as well get their kicks out of the job, until some other agent killed them or their vortex manipulators glitched and they got stuck in another time loop or whatever fate had in store for them _this_ time. He had absolutely no doubt he’d die on the job or on the run.

The Redjay had a strange look on her face; somewhere between frustration and grudging respect, at a guess. He supposed a thief as accomplished as her would appreciate the lengths he’d had to go to in order to not only hotwire the car but also do so without being seen and drive in it. Drinking, no less! Though he was pretty certain he was hiding that bit well. 'Jack' had her wrist cuffed to his and an arm wrapped around her to hide it, his coat slung over her shoulders, and John could see from the way that she was fidgeting that she was trying to get it undone, but there was no way she’d pick the lock before they were moving and nowhere for her to go once they were on the road.

“The almighty Time Agency,” smirked the Time Lady, looking from the car to the two of them, “and _this_ is the best transport you have?”

'Jack' raised an eyebrow, still too annoyed to comment, but John shot her a glare that could practically have burned holes through her skin and leaned over the hood of the sleek, red goddess.

“Don’t listen to the nasty alien,” he cooed, running his palms over the purring metal, “Daddy’s going to take _good_ care of you.”

“Ugh!”

She turned up her nose and looked away, which John counted as one point John, nil points Redjay, so far. 'Jack' dropped his head into his free hand. To his credit, his expression was more or less neutral when he resurfaced, with even a hint of a glimmer of ‘good taste, John’ in his eyes.

“Shouldn’t you buy it dinner first?” The Redjay’s groan intensified, and 'Jack' nudged her in the ribs. “Nice oil change? Hard waxing?”

“Oh, hard _something_ alright!”

“Get a highway, John.”

“Could you please stop talking?” asked the Redjay, staring at the sky as if she was ready for it to swallow her up. “It’s a good-looking car. We all get it.” She sighed. “Rassilon, I almost wish he’d let you shoot me…”

“If you’re into that,” grinned John, realising that despite his dislike of her, _he_ was, “that can be arranged.”

“Fuck off.”

“Suit yourself, Sweetcheeks.”

Leaving 'Jack' to deal with uncuffing the Redjay long enough to get her into the back of the car, John sashayed away and stole the driver’s seat before 'Jack' could complain any further. He danced his fingertips along the sleek, black leather steering wheel, biting his bottom lip, and then stretched out his legs. Of course he’d already adjusted the mirrors, and the driver’s seat. Just ‘cause he didn’t have his license until he got sober for another couple of months didn’t mean he didn’t remember how to drive. He’d dumped the contents of the car in the sewage, too, trusting in the filth and whatever the fuck was down there to muddy it all up before someone had time to trace the car back to them. Nothing like rot and the occasional reptile of unusual size to fuck up fingerprints for you. The only thing he hadn’t yet checked was the glove box, which usually had the important stuff like letters and cards that you had to get rid of properly.

As the back door opened, John came back to himself with the abrupt reintroduction of his partner and their target bickering like they’d known each other for centuries.

“Look. I _know_ you like handcuffs-”

“Not the kind of thing I like to blurt out in public when I’m on a job, but sure.”

The Redjay growled, looking very much less concerned for her safety than John was sure she should be and more like she’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

“Right, _fine_ , but do I have to wear them in the car?”

'Jack' opened his mouth to say something as he pushed down on the Redjay’s shoulder, somehow working all of her knobbly elbows and knees into the car without breaking anything. God knew she wasn’t making his job easy. John chuckled but turned around, hooking his arm around the head rest with a lazy smile.

“After last night, count yourself lucky he’s not cuffing your feet.”

The Time Lord paused in her squirming for just a second, pinning him with a dark look.

“I’d like to see him _try_.”

“Oh believe me,” laughed John, turning again and fiddling with the radio. “So would I!” He kept up his running commentary all through flipping through the different channels, ignoring the hearty kick to the back of his chair that indicated 'Jack' had gotten most of the Time Lord’s limbs into the car. _That, or she’s really fucking flexible, coming in from the passenger side._ “The two of you all sweaty, rolling around in the sheets like a pair of _animals_. All that sexual tension of who shot who,” 'Jack', he was sure, gave him a look, “nice cheap romance novel shit. Cops and robbers, can’t get much hotter than that.”

“Don’t paint me with _your_ brush,” snorted the Redjay. John shrugged.

“I’m just saying, you’ve been undressing _your 'Jack'_ with your eyes since you got here.” He turned just his head to look at her, all smiles and teeth and predatory eyes. “Better do something about it before I get jealous.”

To his surprise, the Redjay didn’t so much rise to his threat but pause, tilting her head to one side. 'Jack' muttered something under his breath and took advantage of the moment to grab hold of her wrist again, clipping it to the door handle of the cramped back seat - sports cars, not really designed with extra passengers in mind - and shutting the door on her. He tossed his jacket over her, leaving it in the free spot; pockets no doubt emptied out of anything useful. John hardly noticed, and the side of his mouth began to twitch. He didn’t like the way the Time Lord was looking at him. Like she knew something. _Aren’t they telepaths? S’that why she’s staring?_

And then before he could snap at her, she simply leaned back in her seat as though they were her fucking chauffeur company, fastening the goddamned seatbelt and then raising an eyebrow at him as if to say ‘ _check_ ’. Whatever decision she’d come to, he _really_ didn’t like it.

'Jack' slid into the passenger seat and buckled up, putting his arms behind his head. John did his best to make his expression neutral as he begrudgingly broke eye contact, and took the car out of park. And for ten minutes, there was peace in the car. The Redjay quietly jangled the cuffs and muttered to herself in some alien language as she tried to find a way out of her situation. 'Jack' closed his eyes and almost but not quite dozed off; John knew him well enough to know that he had an ear on everything going on, and would probably notice anything happening before anyone else in the car did. John drummed along to the least annoying thing he’d found on the radio, driving far too fast and loving every second of it. They were an hour and a half from the star-port (unless they hit traffic) and while he could happily have made this drive last for hours, he was content to just get to port and get somewhere even the Redjay couldn’t escape from.

Hard to make a run for it in the vacuum of space on whatever shit vessel _they’d_ be able to get a ride on.

As he swerved onto the highway with a delicious screech of burning rubber - the Redjay swearing in the back seat and 'Jack' jarred from his mini-nap - however, the calm suddenly broke.

“So,” began the Redjay, deceptively calmly. John narrowed his eyes as he watched her in the rear-view mirror. “You’re partners.”

“When the job calls for it,” began 'Jack', at the same time that John spoke.

“In more ways than one, Sweetcheeks.”

“Uh huh.” The Redjay crossed her legs, chin up provocatively. “Here I thought Time Agents liked to work alone.”

Since he’d been disturbed anyway, 'Jack' started searching through the glove box, spreading out an assortment of letters and licenses on his lap while he spoke. John rolled his eyes. _Talking with the cons._ Definitely _a great idea..!_ He was beginning to think 'Jack' wanted into her pants, too.

“We do,” explained 'Jack', holding up a driver’s license for John to read. The other Time Agent flicked his gaze at it, and shrugged.

“ _That_ loser owns this baby? She’s better off with us,” he thumbed the gear stick, “we’ll treat her better.”

“As I was _saying_ ,” continued 'Jack', rolling his eyes, “yeah, usually we go solo. John and I just click better’n most.”

“Is that what you’re calling it in the fifty first century?” The Redjay laughed. “ _Clicking._ ”

“I mean,” 'Jack' beamed, “have you ever slept with a Malmooth? Those mandibles are _loud_ when they get excited. And don’t even get me _started_ on A'askvarii!”

“Wait,” spluttered the woman, incredulously. “Bipedal? Tentacles? Gills?”

“Don’t even need to come up for air,” responded 'Jack', smugly. John couldn’t help but grin.

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.” He hardly remembered that night, but he _did_ remember the gills. “No gag reflex. It’s _very_ hot.”

“And how about 'Jack'?” asked the Redjay, sweetly, sequing John right into the trap he’d almost forgotten was coming and almost seguing them both all of the road. “How’s _his_ gag reflex?”

“You cheeky little-!”

“Non-existent _without_ the gills,” contributed 'Jack', with clear pride. “If you’re that interested.”

John’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles going white as he pushed down on the accelerator as though somehow, he could make the sports car go past its top speed. But the Redjay was still talking, and he could feel her eyes boring into the back of his head rest.

“If your _partner_ wasn’t so jealous,” she continued, making John clench his teeth, “I’m sure you could show me.”

“John? Jealous?” 'Jack' roared with laughter, tearing a pile of unimportant bills into unintelligible little piles of paper and dropping them to the floor of the car as he shut the glove box once again. “We’re not exactly exclusive, Redjay.”

 _And I know damn well what you’re trying to do,_ thought John, imagining a hundred ways to get his own back even as he realised her little game was turning him on, too. _Trying to wind me up. Well, you’re ours._ She could push as many buttons as she wanted to if it made her feel better. Once they turned her in for the bounty she’d be out of their hair and John could console himself however much he liked with 'Jack', all to himself. If she didn’t like their practically _cushy_ treatment, then she was royally screwed in a Time Agency cell. _Minx. Maybe I’ll pay her a visit when she’s well and truly tired of pacing the floor, see if she’s so cocky then._

But damn it, he _liked_ the cocky. And the danger. And her rap sheet. And the speed he was driving at. It was very, _very_ distracting.

“Shut up in the back there,” he snapped, turning up the volume on the radio, “or you’re spending the rest of the drive gagged.”

He saw 'Jack' raise an eyebrow, but say nothing. The Redjay grinned but held up her free hand, pretending to wave an invisible flag of surrender. And then she turned in her seat, no longer paying them either attention as she curled up against the arm rest and tugged 'Jack's' coat into a bundle to use as a pillow. One arm still dangled awkwardly from the door handle, but the chain wasn’t too short, and it was clear that she’d gotten the rise out of him that she’d been pushing for, for all the use it had done her. Maybe it just made her feel better to think she had something over him; to prove that she wasn’t scared of them. Or maybe she got off on winding people up. _How the hell should I know? Gotta be pretty fucked up in the head to be on the Agency’s Most Wanted list, I suppose._

It wasn’t like it had _achieved_ anything. John rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the road, and tried to pretend that he wasn’t just a little bit impressed. And when a few minutes passed and 'Jack' silently put a hand on his knee, well, that didn’t mean anything either. It didn’t _reassure_ him or anything.

He was John Hart, and he was not jealous of the pretty little shrimp of a thing sleeping in the back seat. He had a fast car and a hot partner that was _his_ and they’d be rolling in credits when this job was over. If he let the job keep getting to him, it was going to take all of the buzz out of things...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Guardians of the Galaxy:  
>  _"Man who has lain with an A'askavariian!"_  
>  "It was one time, man."
> 
> ...what? Fanfiction writers get to cross their fandoms every once in a while. Dan Abnett's written for Torchwood, Doctor Who and Guardians of the Galaxy, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”_   
>  **― G.K. Chesterton**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this chapter changes in the next 24 hours (as of 25/01), then I've found the second draft that's gone walkies. If it does change, it'll be super minor corrections.

**CARDIFF, 2006**

Jack sank into a chair at the table in the briefing room in the Hub ten minutes later without shedding light on anything that had happened in the cell below them. He was vaguely aware of Gwen and Ianto sharing concerned looks above him, neither of them quite willing to meet his eyes. More than anything he could feel the frustration radiating from Gwen that he was keeping secrets. She was never happy with him when he was keeping secrets. And Ianto, from the look on his face, definitely had hurt feelings from being ordered to leave the cell when really, what he’d been doing was… relatively harmless. But Jack wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be saying to them; his own mind was reeling.

When he’d found the Redjay in the Roath Basin, he had been certain he held all of the cards. He knew who she was, he was  _ reasonably  _ certain that they were going to end up friends (considering everything that had happened the second time they’d met, in the Peninsula) and he’d been quietly hoping for a tumble in the sheets by lunch time. But nothing had gone as planned.  _ And then I let her into my mind. _

He rubbed his temples absentmindedly, wondering how long the headache was going to last.  _ What was I  _ thinking _?  _ One second he’d been yelling at Ianto for talking to her, and the next he had been offering up his memories for her to the taking. She was a Time Lord; what he called telepathy was almost certainly the sort of thing that she’d learned in preschool (if Time Lords had preschool) and yet he’d lowered his defences like an idiot. The problem was that he  _ really  _ wanted to trust her. He  _ wanted  _ to say that she wasn’t a threat, and was a potential friend, and that it was fine for Ianto to go down to the basement and have a nice chat with her. There was just something about her that he couldn’t put a finger on and while he was ordinarily inclined to trust his gut on things like this… he had to remember to be Captain Jack Harkness. Not plain old Jack.

More than anything, he wanted an immortal that could understand him. The Doctor had abandoned him. Ianto, Gwen, Tosh and Owen, they were all great people, and he trusted them (figuratively) with his life on a daily basis, but there was something other about him that they would never be able to wrap their heads around. He felt like the Redjay might be different, somehow. She felt like an outsider like he was. He desperately wanted to be  _ right  _ about her.

“Jack?”

Gwen's voice eventually snapped him to attention and he glanced up at her, taking pains to paint a reassuring and relaxed smirk onto his face as he did so. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“What the fuck  _ happened _ down there, Jack?” Gwen half-pouted as she glared down at him, one eyebrow raised. PC Cooper all over. “One minute you were in your office and the next Ianto's charging up here like the devil's on his back and you’re doing some - some Vulcan mind meld with the prisoner downstairs!”

“Vulcans aren’t real.”

“ _ Jack _ .”

“And besides,” he looked at Ianto out of the corner of his eye, smiling despite himself. “There’s plenty of betters things I could do with Ianto on his-”

“ _ Jack _ !”

Gwen spoke over him, and he sighed inwardly.  _ No falling back on the old flirt-and-deflect tactic, then.  _

“Did she do something to you? The alien?”

“…No.” He stewed over the answer, and finally decided that he owed Gwen at least as much as he had told Ianto earlier. “I've met her before. Her name is Ro-” he stopped; she probably wouldn’t appreciate him sharing that much. “The Redjay. I didn't know what to expect,” he held up a hand to halt the stream of questions that he was certain Gwen was about to ask, “but she's scared, and that makes her dangerous, even unarmed. I couldn't risk one of you talking to her until I'd questioned her myself."

"Don't you think you should trust us, Jack?" Gwen's voice was strained as she gestured to her side. "If not the rest of us, Ianto at least."

"I..." Jack sighed. "It's complicated."

"So you keep telling us," snapped Gwen, talking over Ianto's half-raised hand, "but if you don't tell us anything how is it supposed to get any  _ less _ complicated?"

She was right. Jack was so used to doing things on his own that he sometimes forgot her had a team to help him. That he had friends. Folding his hands in front of him he began to talk, telling Gwen everything that he had told Ianto ealier, and a little bit more. They would catch Owen and Tosh up later.

“- _ and _ she's just regenerated, I think.”

“Regenerated?”

“Time Lords change their appearance when they die. Not just their appearance,” he continued, noting Ianto and Gwen's confused looks, “but their whole personality. From what the – from what  _ I  _ know, they become a whole different person.”

“Then how can you hold the person in the cell accountable,” argued Ianto, reasonably, “for whatever you think she did in the past?”

Jack blinked, surprised by Ianto’s blunt observation. He looked at the monitor Gwen had been gesturing at, thinking about the last ten minutes.  _ Where do I draw the moral line? I have no idea what she’s thinking, now.  _ It had been clear that she remembered everything that she’d done in the past, and had made no attempt to hide that she recognized him. But after he’d shown her the gap in his mind where two years of memory had once been, she’d stopped shouting at him. She had believed him - he assumed - and let him lock her up in the cell once more without saying another word. What conclusions had she drawn about his past, while  _ he  _ was busy judging her future?

“She’s still a criminal,” Jack pointed out, weakly. “Wanted in more systems than I can count on my hands.”

“Well, does she remember everything when she… regenerates?” asked Gwen, sinking into a chair opposite Jack’s with that look on her face that meant she was thinking something through very intently. It was an expression that usually preceded what made her Gwen, rather than PC Cooper, and Jack prepared himself for a bollocksing that would  _ not  _ be pleasant. “Does she remember,” Gwen waved a hand, “dying?”

“Yes.” Jack met her gaze, careful not to let Ianto see the look her gave her.  _ Don’t tell him my secret,  _ he said with his eyes, pleadingly. Gwen kept her mouth shut. “She does.”

“Then she needs a doctor,” insisted Ianto. Jack snorted as Ianto scowled, raising his voice.  _ Now the kids are ganging up on me?  _ “Not a jailer.” He shuffled his feet anxiously, as though unaccustomed to being a part of these conversations, and not just the person who brought the coffee. Jack refrained from pointing out to him that the second he’d spoken to the Redjay, he’d brought  _ himself  _ into this investigation. “She’s hurting, can’t any of you see that?”

“She’s angry, and confused,” argued Jack. But his heart was no longer in it. “If we send Owen in -  _ another  _ stranger - there’s no telling how she’ll lash out.”

“Then  _ I’ll  _ go,” insisted Ianto. Jack shot him down with a look, before Gwen intervened.

“So sedate her first. Treat her wounds - does she have any wounds?” Jack shook his head, although when he thought about it, he wasn’t  _ entirely  _ sure. It depended on how long ago the regeneration had been, he supposed, but he hadn’t exactly been able to press the Doctor for details, last time they’d met. He just knew it was a thing, theoretically, that Time Lords could do. She didn’t  _ look  _ injured, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding something. There  _ were  _ all those burns on her armour, after all. “Check her out at least, then. Get a meal in her. Calm her down. You too.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” muttered Jack. Gwen only scowled.

“You just locked down the Hub, yelled at Ianto, and pointed a gun at a young woman down there that did nothing wrong apart from land in the bloody basin!”

“I’m doing my job.”

“Aren’t you the one,” she continued, folding her arms, “that’s always telling the rest of us that not every alien out there’s as bad as the weevils?” Jack shut his mouth; quietly proud, but frustrated to be undermined. “Check her out at least, then. Get a meal in her. Calm her down. You too. You’re  _ both  _ wound up. Just cause you think you don’t know her doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve a  _ chance _ , right?”

Jack sighed, but gave Gwen a weak smile.  _ The kids are growing up, I guess. Making decisions without me; sooner or later, I’ll be out of a job!  _ And they were right. He was on edge. All the talk of Daleks had had him expecting the worst and even knowing that, he'd lashed out.

He looked at Ianto, who clearly agreed with Gwen. Ianto, who just as the Time Lord had said, was perfectly unharmed and old enough and pretty enough not to need his hand held, anyway. He chastised himself, silently; he hadn't even thought to ask what they'd spoken about. Instead he’d stormed in and broken up the first peaceful conversation any of them had had with the Redjay. Wishing not for the first time that he could start the whole meeting with her all over again, he swore out loud. It hadn't been the postulating or the threats that had gotten through to her. It had been Ianto's heart, and Jack trusting her not to break his mind. Honesty and kindness. Ianto was right, she needed someone, just like he did. And he had been too blind to see it.

Apparently he wasn't as good a man as he thought he was.

“Fuck… Alright.”

Gwen opened her mouth to argue again, before realising that Jack was agreeing with her. She paused for a moment before grinning somewhere between reassurance, and victory. 

“Should I get Owen to…?”

Jack shook his head. “She needs something strong. Ketamine, maybe?” Gwen blinked in surprise, and Jack ran a hand through his hair. “Strictly  _ no  _ aspirin. It could kill her. But we need to put her out before she knows what’s happening.” Jack had the faint suspicion that any chance he might have at earning her trust would dissolve away into nothing if she  _ did _ , and that even then, this had bad idea written all over it. “Might knock the weevils out too if we pump it through the system...” he chuckled, “Guess Janet needs her beauty sleep.”

“Ketamine?” confirmed Gwen, a little dubiously. Jack nodded.

“Different respiratory system. She’ll be fine once she wakes up.”

Apparently coming to some unspoken conclusion, Gwen stood up and nodded to Jack before disappearing off to another room, presumably to find Owen. Ianto moved to follow her, but Jack jumped to his feet, grabbing him firmly but gently by the wrist.

“Ianto…”

“Sir?”

The word was tense, almost forced.  _ He’s still cross.  _ Jack couldn’t blame him. He traced circles into Ianto’s wrist with his thumb, turning to face him and resisting the almost uncontrollable urge to reach out and cup his cheek in his hand. Opening himself up to the Time Lady like that had been draining, and he didn’t want  _ Ianto  _ in a mood with him, as well; no matter how justifiable it was.

“I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Ianto drawled in those beautiful Welsh vowels, but he didn’t pull his hands away. He didn’t meet Jack’s eyes, either, but it was a start. He got the feeling that before he’d gone in guns blazing, there was something very important he’d missed, down in the cells. “You  _ are  _ the boss.”

“That’s not the…” Jack sighed again as he pulled Ianto closer, selfishly seeking physical comfort. Reassurance that he wasn’t in too much trouble. When he felt Ianto relax in his arms he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and smiled. “Whatever you said down there, it got through to her.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Before he could ask for more, Ianto pulled away, straightening his tie and clearing his throat as a faint blush spread across his face. Jack managed a weak smile in return, and Ianto returned it - argument forgiven. But it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Jack held onto his hand and squeezed it, but knew better than to push. 

“So,” he said, stepping back to give Ianto some space and folding his arms. “What  _ did  _ you do?”

Ianto smiled again.

“I  _ listened _ .”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."_   
>  **\- Carrie Fisher**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets a little smutty. See end of chapter for content warnings.

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA,** **The 51st Century**

_Well, this is it Rodageitmososa. You’ve finally fucked up both a paradox and an escape so badly that your whole future could go up in flames._

Roda groaned, staring out the porthole - who in Skaro put a porthole into outer space in a _bathroom_ ?! - and taking her time to strip off the clothes she’d been in for the past few days. Her mind was going a mile a minute as she tried to think just _how_ she was supposed to get out of this one. Jack - her Jack, twenty first century Jack - had mentioned this whole sodding mess on the day she’d turned up in Torchwood. He had to have given her _some_ clue about how she got out of it. Because she _had_ to get out of it! Because if she wound up once again in Time Agency custody there would be no more ‘this time’ and no more… anything. She and Jack might never become friends. And that was a paradox she could do without. A paradox she couldn’t live with, not after losing her home, and Peri, and Wick.

Not that she was against breaking the laws of non-interference if she had to. She just didn’t _want_ to. But if it was a toss-up between getting this crucial moment wrong and having a second chance to orchestrate ‘meeting’ Jack then there was very little she _wasn’t_ prepared to do.

A thought that scared her, in ways that she didn’t quite understand. Why did she care so much about one man? One man who had _killed_ her? She hadn’t felt so strongly about _anything_ in a very, very long time.

The only consolation was that she didn’t have a headache. Paradoxes had given her migraines since her days at the Academy, when they’d been shown what not to do. It was seeing too many timelines at once that did it, she supposed. And so if she didn’t have a migraine, perhaps things were still going the way they were supposed to? Escape was still possible? All was not lost? It was a small thing to hold onto, but cling to it she would.

 _Self pity never got me anywhere, anyway,_ she thought to herself, making a messy pile of her clothes as far away from the shower as she could manage. Outside she could hear the two Time Agents talking amongst themselves, and decided that after winding up the violent one just because she _could_ she should probably count her blessings that they’d left her unattended to have a shower. It was a small bathroom in a small room on a small vessel with a decorated passenger cabin - a common enough way to make money amongst freighters - but she had been promised hot water. She would focus on that now, and maybe the shower would clear her head and she’d have some bright idea or another before she made port.

The water spluttered at first, barely dribbling from the shower head as Roda rubbed the goosebumps on her arms and leaned on the small sink. It was an old shower, but she’d heard the freighter captain brag that it was a ‘goodie’. The floor looked rough, but she’d bathed in rivers before, cutting her soles on sharp rocks. A hard shower would be like standing on marshmallows, and perfectly fine; if, of course, the shower ever became more than a trickle. It felt like she’d been waiting hours, but she knew it was more like seconds. _If nothing else,_ she thought, trying not to be disappointed that her Time Agency capture didn’t come with all the amenities of a five-star hotel (ha!), _it’ll be enough water to scrape the dust off…_

And then, just as she was beginning to give up hope, it hissed and erupted to life, and she shut the door with just enough time not to soak the floor. She couldn’t help but grin and for a moment, it didn’t matter that she hadn’t figured out a way to lock or barricade the door, and she was completely defenceless. There was steam rising from the shower and soon she’d be _clean_ and then maybe she’d be able to barter some coffee out of her currently-lethal lover. _It’s not giving_ up _on escape_ , she reassured herself. _It’s just prioritizing._

She opened the shower door just a crack and stepped right into the water without testing it. Searing hot water from a decent-pressure jet roared against her back and she savoured the sensation with a low moan. _Fuck the boys. I could stay here for hours._ Her stress, her frustration at being caught, her misgivings about John all seemed to float away as she grew accustomed to the heat and slowly moved to let the water run over her face. Her hair stuck to her cheeks as she scrunched her eyes shut, smiling despite herself. Sometimes, when everything seemed lost, the little comforts were enough. And Rassilon knew that she’d gone without comforts enough in her life that she appreciated each and every one of them.

Eventually, she’d have to properly wash. But for the longest time she just stood in the water, melting more than a little, her thoughts wandering nowhere in particular. Blindly she reached for the bottle she’d spotted earlier that was _probably_ some kind of shampoo, peering at it with one eye. She didn’t recognize the language, but it said ‘hair’ and ‘5-in-1’ and had some kind of fruit on the packaging, and that was good enough for her.

Lathering a generous amount into her hands she ran her fingertips over her scalp with a contented hum as the steam enveloped her in a scent not unlike berries. No berry she _recognized,_ but a small berry kind of vibe. A smell that seemed almost edible, and masked the chemicals of the probably-shampoo. She lost herself in her senses; warmth and sweet air and the deafening rush of the water. For just a few minutes it was enough to forget where she was as the water massaged her shoulders and the steam rose and fell down the walls in little droplets.

The sound of the door opening jarred her out of her comfort a second too late to respond. Too late to grab a towel or yell or - or something. At a loss - not all that bothered by modesty, she realised - she grabbed the bottle of shampoo and brandished it like a makeshift club… to the evident amusement of John Hart.

“Your partner told me I could shower in _peace,_ ” she growled, warningly. _And he’s naked. Rassilon help me, why is he naked?_ “You can wait your turn, Time Agent.”

“I’m not my partner,” commented John lightly, stretching his arms over his head, and his neck until it clicked. “And I’m stiff as anything.”

Roda narrowed her eyes, still half-covered in soap. “Was that supposed to be a euphemism?”

The Time Agent paused, and then roared with laughter. “Well truth be told, I came in here to annoy you after your little stunt in the car but it _can_ be one,” he lidded his eyes, “if you want it to be.”

Putting down the bottle - relatively certain that if nothing else, the Time Agent probably wasn’t carrying a gun somewhere on his naked body - Roda groaned. She tried to pay him no notice; perhaps if she didn’t give him the rise he wanted, he’d go away. But as she closed her eyes against the impending soap and started to rinse out her hair what she heard instead was the sound of the shower door opening and shutting, water splashing all over the floor, as John got in to join her. With suds all over her face she couldn’t see him, and Roda felt her hackles go up, before slender fingers moved her hands out of the way and began to massage her scalp.

She couldn’t help but moan. _That feels… good._ John chuckled, but she could ignore it. Still tense and tired, she put aside her better judgement and turned her back on him, giving him better access to her hair. John pressed his chest up against her wet skin, his chin on her shoulder and his mouth against her neck, scooping her slick hair to the other side. As his hands moved down her neck Roda rolled her shoulders, wiping the last of suds from her eyes.

“John…”

Of course he didn’t trust her. Roda would be an idiot not to have noticed that - she didn’t trust _him_ either - and the way that he was just a little too trigger-happy, or the fact that he was jealous of the time of day that ‘his’ Jack was giving her. She would have had to be completely blind not to know that this Time Agent was even more dangerous than Jack could be because he was unpredictable, and probably a little high on something. But then she had also caught the way his fingers he clenched when she’d tried to rile him up, and the sideways glances he’d been giving her. She would have much preferred if it was _Jack_ \- dependable, strong, charming Jack - but his partner was easy on the eyes too. And Jack had said they weren’t exclusive.

It was a stupid, breakneck risk to be taking… but he was very good with his hands. And maybe loosening up a little around each other would make him less likely to shoot her later on. After all, she wasn’t the _only_ high-strung one aboard the freighter.

“Fuck,” swore John, one hand braced on the shower wall. Roda could feel his words vibrating against her neck, “you’re purring more than the car.”

Roda’s eyes narrowed as she melted into his hands, the gentle teasing turning into firmer, rougher massaging. It was easy to pretend that he was someone she actually liked; easier still to remind herself that this was a terrible idea - but her life was made up of them anyway, and maybe it would do her some good. John’s hands moved further down, cupping then kneading her breasts like an overly curious cat, and Roda couldn’t have moved away even if she wanted to. And she didn’t want to, but she pushed him away just long enough to put her back to the wall of the shower - temperature knob digging into her back - and meet the Time Agent’s hungry eyes. Intense, pale blue eyes _that,_ she decided, _are still trying to undress me even though I’m wearing nothing at all._

Those eyes left hers, and then his teeth sank into the skin of her clavicle. Rough and needy and not _attentive_ per se but fuck, was she paying attention. This was all for his benefit; he was taking what _he_ wanted but he was touching her in all of the right places, and Roda didn’t mind in the least bit so long as he kept doing _that_ with his mouth. Before she even had a chance to properly realise what she was doing she was gripping his short hair in her fist and his mouth was moving south. A trail of bites followed his path across her body like breadcrumbs, and Roda tipped her head back as he grabbed hold of her hips tight enough to leave marks and pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh.

“If this is all it takes to get you to stay put,” murmured John, nibbling at her thigh, “then we could’ve gotten along _hours_ ago.” Roda moved her legs a little further apart, free hand gripping the temperature dial while the other still held his hair; she wasn’t ready to give up _all_ control, here. She felt him laugh. “Fuck, you’re all _malleable_ like this. Under my mouth.” His fingers curled to the point of pain, nails digging into the skin, and Roda hitched in a breath. “Right where I want you.” And then - drawing a strangled groan of frustration from Roda - he pulled out of her grasp and rocked back on his heels smugly. “Or…”

Roda bared her teeth, breathy with the need for him to continue, to put his mouth back _there_. “What?”

“I could just leave you hanging,” he grinned, pulling himself to his feet by the shower door. Roda’s jaw almost dropped. “After the little stunt you played in the car.”

“You wouldn’t…”

“Oh,” said John, licking his lips, “you are a _sight_. Don’t think I’m not tempted… but I think I will.” He grinned. “‘Cause you’ll be on the edge and I’ll be out there shagging my partner, soon as he’s back from talking to the skipper.”

Before Roda could say anything else, he grabbed hold of her and gave her a rough, wet kiss, engulfing her mouth in his. Roda's mind reeled as she held onto his shoulders, putting everything into returning the kiss, hoping that he was just making a threat. His lips tasted sweet, salty, smooth, of cherry and sweat and just a little bit of soap. His tugged at her bottom lip until it seemed like it would bleed and their teeth clacked together and the kiss was clumsy and desperate and raw. And then just as quickly as it was done he stepped away, swinging open the shower door with a bang and waltzing away.

"Something to remember me by, love."

Roda touched her lips as they continued to tingle, blinking, suddenly not exactly sure what had happened as she watched his glistening, bony arse disappear through the steam. She closed her eyes, yanking the door back shut and resolving to do something about the situation he'd left her in before the world began to swim. _He wasn't_ that _good_ , Roda chastised herself, hand slipping between her legs, and the world all tipped to one side again like someone flipping an hour glass. The Time Lady blinked, palm on the shower wall, and shook her head as she licked her lips again. Glossy... cherry... and no, not soap. Something else... _oh, Skaro..._

True to the Captain's word, the water stayed warm, even long after Roda had stumbled out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Shower Sex, Presumed Consent, Drug Use


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"It takes a leap of faith to get things going  
>  It takes a leap of faith, you gotta show some guts  
> It takes a leap of faith to get things going  
> In your heart you must trust"_   
>  **\- Bruce Springsteen, 'Leap of Faith'**

**CARDIFF, 2006**

For nine days, life continued almost as normal at Torchwood.

It turned out that there were _no_ impending Daleks on the horizon, and though he had to put up with a little bit of teasing for going to red alert all for nothing, Jack found his tension slipping away until only everyday problems remained.

There were still weevils to chase and blowfish gangs to corral but for the most part, the Rift was quiet and in fact, Cardiff seemed to almost return to normal. Next to no aliens, and nothing obviously looming on the horizon. Had it not been for the aliens already in the city, it felt as though they wouldn't have had anything to do at all. It was relaxing, though he would have been lying if he’d said he wasn't suspicious. Then again, when push came to shove, a peaceful week was a peaceful week, and Jack wasn't one to look that kind of a gift in the mouth.

The most complicated part of the week had, of course, been the Redjay herself. Though he knew her real name (or at least, the name she had given him before) he forced himself not to use it when he talked to her, until she volunteered it; at Ianto’s suggestion. As it turned out, Gwen’s insistence that they check her over had been a good instinct. Once Owen had got her on the examination table - and Jack had explained the twin hearts - she’d had a strange turn that they still weren’t sure wasn't _their_ fault. The flash of gold light setting off the fire alarm, however, had been particularly memorable. But whatever had been going on with her regeneration, Owen seemed to have gotten things under control and for the most part, she seemed to be recovering nicely.

The problem was, really, that after the drama of her first day in Torchwood the Redjay had become practically silent. Jack went down every day and sat with her, waiting for her to say something, sometimes even talking about the day. If she was listening at all she gave him no indication, but then she wasn't lashing out either. Ianto went down as well and if she spoke to him, he didn't talk about their conversations and Jack didn't pry. Jack sighed, helping himself to another slice of pepperoni. If she wouldn’t talk to him, he couldn't figure out what to do with her. It was true that she didn't seem to be dangerous but she didn't seem like the woman he'd met before, either. What was missing from the equation? How could he get her to trust him?

He scowled to himself as he picked absently at a wayward olive, running through his options for the hundredth time, when somebody interrupted his thoughts.

"What do you think, Jack?" He shook his head, startled, and stared at Owen for a second before the doctor repeated the question. "Reckon Gordon Brown'll be PM next?"

"What, Labour?" Tosh pulled a face. "Don't you think Harriet Jones has a chance? With the Greens?"

"Not after Torchwood One..." muttered Ianto, darkly. Jack shot him a look, but Tosh was quick to interrupt.

"Fine," she raised an eyebrow. "Jack'll back me up, won't you Jack?"

"Not a chance." He grinned, doing his best to hide his gratitude, for Ianto's sake. "Alien."

Gwen scoffed, hastily swallowing a slice of her half of the pizza. "Come off it Jack...!"

"I mean it."

Jack took another bite of his pizza, relishing in the change of subject. He enjoyed pretending not to know the answer to the sorts of questions that an ex-time traveller would. It was a good exercise in logic; what were the right words to say to sound _informed_ without being too certain? Then again, sometimes just telling the truth and making it sound like an eccentric lie did the trick. _And it’s a lot of fun, too._

"Brancheerian. Shapeshifting species, relatively harmless."

"Fuck off..." muttered Owen, reaching for the neck of his bottle of beer. Jack rolled his eyes fondly.

"What happens if the PM's an alien?" mused Tosh, looking briefly up from the sonic device that she'd been trying to decipher over the course of the meal. Jack had given her a few pointers (mainly that he was fairly certain it was for picking locks) but Tosh enjoyed learning about alien tech herself, and so he’d left her to it. "Do we deal with it?"

"If they run the country alright I say let 'em be," announced Owen, "can't be any worse than ol' Big Ears, am I right?"

“It might add some perspective,” mused Tosh, nodding along to Owen's remark, “kind of like a foreign exchange?”

“Certainly adds something,” Owen smirked, making Gwen snort into the neck of her beer.

Jack rolled his eyes again. _Kids_... Ianto, on the other hand, groaned.

“ _Not_ an image I needed in my head while I was eating.”

“Hasn't he got a wife?” Owen grinned ear to ear, the drink putting him on a roll. “Think she knows she's fucking a martian?”

“Brancheerians are from Sirius V,” interjected Jack, half-heartedly, “not Mars.”

His comment was, somewhat unsurprisingly he noted, drowned out by the more important discussion about Gordon Brown's personal life. He left them to their gossip; goodness knew they needed a chance to behave like a normal team of colleagues every once in a while. In fact he didn't even have it in him to complain that they were drinking beer in the Hub. Owen had produced a six-pack from God only knew where and the city was quiet enough that he, Tosh and Gwen had decided it was safe to crack one open. Jack and Ianto had passed. 

"Doesn't matter anyway," commented Gwen. "Everyone I know's planning to vote for that Saxon fella."

The Captain leaned back in his chair, half-following where the conversation was going as his mind drifted off again. Try as he might, he kept thinking about the Time Lady downstairs. _All this talk of aliens with shifting faces_ , he supposed. He glanced at the half-eaten pizza, strewn across the table. She hadn’t eaten much all week, even though they’d been bringing her meals. Maybe she’d appreciate a slice? _Or maybe I just fancy a change in conversation…_ Jack sighed, pushing himself away from the table and reaching for a slice as he stood up. _I have to figure something out soon._ Maybe what he needed to do was extend an olive branch, like Ianto had.

“I’ll be right back,” he announced. Ianto shot him a curious look, but he shook his head imperceptibly, following it up with a trademark wink. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“Hmm…”

Jack chuckled to himself as he turned away, tearing the lid off a discarded empty box and rolling up his sleeves. _Almost made Ianto blush... No! Focus, Jack._ He headed downstairs, pausing only to rap his knuckles on the heavy steel door of the Redjay’s cell before unlocking. _In case she's still angry about interrupting her talk with Ianto..._ She looked up as he did, tilting her head and listening for him as he peeked through the visor, and he keyed in the lock combination and side-stepped through the door with a grin, shutting it quick behind him. But before he could even offer her the pizza or attempt to strike up a conversation, she broke her nine day silence herself.

“You ordered pizza to an underground base?”

Jack blinked, off-guard. “How’d you know it was underground.”

“Acoustics,” she answered, starkly casual compared to her earlier hostility. She stood up, cracked her neck and stretched her back, barely sparing Jack a second glance. _That’s a good thing_ , he decided, still smiling despite being thrown. _Guess she’s not expecting me to shoot her in the hearts anymore._ “That, and the damp.” She paused, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. “You mentioned a river…?”

“Not above us,” he clarified, not quite sure how to take the sudden change in tone.

The Time Lady adjusted her shirt and nodded thoughtfully. At some point in the last few days she’d stripped the armour down to its bare bones, presumably to cool down. What was left clung to her body in all the right places, and showed off a lot of skin and muscles still well-toned, despite a recent regeneration. “No.” She licked her lips. “The damp tastes salty.”

“Good guess.”

Jack felt himself relax in turns. Stabs in the dark about her location, casual comments about the taste of the air - these were weird alien things that he could deal with. Accusations about his missing years and cryptic grudges, not so much. And so he held up the cardboard plate of pizza with a smirk, changing the subject just in case she was familiar enough with the geography of Cardiff – though, it hadn't seemed to ring a bell earlier – that she would be able to pinpoint where the Hub was. That wasn't a detail he was willing to give up easily.

“Want something better-tasting?” She shot him the kind of look that told him she had _definitely_ got the innuendo, but he only shrugged. “I brought you a slice.”

“Is it poisoned?” Jack opened his mouth to argue but was interrupted by sudden, pleasant laughter. “That was a joke. Is there any pineapple?”

“Uh...” he looked down absently at the pizza, blinking again, “no. It's pepperoni.”

“I couldn't stand them in my last body,” the Redjay explained, by way of explanation. She stretched once more before holding her hand out to take the proffered food. “But go on, then. Can't be worse than rations or what you'd been feeding me all week.” Her nose wrinkled up. It was, Jack noticed with some surprise, a familiarly adorable gesture that he recognized from their last meeting. “I mean, is that stuff even fit for the wee-”

“Jack!”

The two near-immortals turned in unison as Gwen jogged down the stairs, taking the concrete steps two at a time. Jack stepped away from the Redjay almost guiltily, not realising until then that just like their last talk he had gravitated closer to her as the conversation went on. Gwen, however, seemed too preoccupied to notice anything and it began to be clear that her interruption was more than just indignation that he'd been gone too long or abandoned them for the Redjay.

“What is it? What's wrong?”

“It's Rhys,” she explained, catching her breath and leaning against the wall with one hand. “He sent me some silly text about a flash mob outside the Royal Arcade.” The Redjay made a sound of utter confusion behind him, but took a second to snatch the pizza from Jack’s hand. He ignored her. “Mannequins climbing out the window display, or something.” She snorted. “Thought it sounded a bit naff actually but Owen googled it, and then I got a page from Andy and apparently,” she looked at Jack, her eyes narrowed in bewilderment, “they've got guns coming out of their bloody hands.”

Jack frowned. _There’s something familiar about that. Why do I remember that?_ He searched through his memories, trying to work out where he’d heard about mannequins with guns before. Was it something he’d come across in his Time Agency days? Something the Doctor had mentioned? _No._ His head snapped up, eyes wide. Rose. It had been Rose who’d mentioned ‘killer mannequins’. Hadn’t that been how she’d met the Doctor, or something? (He’d been more interested, at the time, in how attached she was to the time traveler and how likely she was to snog him. Flirting with her during the Blitz had certainly got his engine running.) To his frustration, he couldn’t remember anything more useful than that.

Grumbling quietly he reached for the holster on his hip, checking that his gun still had bullets in it before running his hand over the cuff of his wrist-strap on instinct. _Should have left it outside_ , he thought, idly, glancing at the Redjay. _Not that she’s gone for it, mind_. But as he made for the door to join Gwen - shooting the Redjay an apologetic ‘let’s do coffee later’ kind of look - he suddenly stopped, and swore.

“You've all been drinking.”

Gwen pulled a weary face. “It's fine, I can still drive-”

“No way.” Jack shook his head, and ran a hand through his hair. _Lost enough people in this job to lose one to drunk driving..._ “Tell Ianto it's just me and him,” he began to coordinate, the Redjay forgotten and Gwen's protests pointedly ignored. “Get Tosh to hack the traffic advisory and set up a road block or a redirect - I need to get down there, fast. Gwen, see if Andy can help with that. Keep traffic off the Hayes and St Mary's, get the pubs cleared, whatever you can.” He pointed at Gwen properly, in Captain mode, “Get Owen to check the records for anything like this, in case Torchwood's seen these before, or UNIT. Ianto and I need to know everything we can about-”

“I can help.” The Redjay grabbed Jack's arm, her naturally tanned skin turning unnaturally pale. Her mouth was an angry line but her eyes were deadly serious and her grip was made of iron. She looked from Jack, to Gwen, and back to Jack, staring at him imploringly. The psychic nudge was subtle, but he could feel that, too, a sort of private 'trust me' that had begun the day he’d opened his mind. “I know what they are, we fought them in the War.”

“War?” Gwen made a surprised noise. “This isn't a War, love, this is _Cardiff_. Jack isn't going to let you out just because you think you can-”

“He is,” snapped the Redjay, “going to let me out, if you don't want any more people to die.” Jack could hear the pain in her voice, in the casing of her thoughts. “Twenty first century technology is _useless_ against the nestene.”

“Nestene?” Jack and Gwen asked, in near-unison.

The Redjay's voice was strained and impatient, her grip on Jack's arm just as much so. “They're a hive mind. Possess plastic, plant sleeper agents on suitable planets while they plan an invasion.”

“Shit,” muttered Gwen.

“I can _help_ ,” repeated the Redjay, raising her voice. “I just need my equipment.”

“Jack,” murmured Gwen, too low for the Redjay to hear – so Jack assumed – the obvious warning.

He nodded once, trying to think what was best.

“Trust me, Jack.”

Deep down, Jack knew that he already _did_ trust her; he had for nine days, now. Back in the Boeshane Peninsula - the meeting of theirs that he remembered - she _had_ almost killed him… but she had made sure that he didn’t die as well. And _despite_ her obvious hatred of the Time Agency. Since he’d opened up his mind to her he felt, instinctively, that there was at least a spark of trust in there for him, too. It had been there in sitting with her in the past days, the glances, and it was here now, in her willingness to accept food from him.

And it wasn’t as though he had many options. He couldn’t risk Gwen or Owen in the field drunk, even if he was the one driving the SUV. Ianto, while sober, was far from a crack shot and had next to no field experience, and Tosh was better off in the Hub doing what she did best. No matter what Gwen might think – and he couldn't blame her for being suspicious – he was confident he could handle the Redjay if it turned out to be a trick, but it didn't feel like one. And hadn’t Gwen said, the day that she’d arrived, that he was judging her too harshly? He hoped he could trust his gut.

Jack gently eased the Redjay's hand from his arm, shot Gwen a look that quietly asked her to trust him, and slipped his gun back into his holster. He tapped his ear-piece with the tip of his index finger, reassuring Gwen that he was only a call away if anything went wrong. She pulled a face at him and pursed her lips, but hurried up the stairs as quickly as she’d descended. A second later, the bluetooth headset fizzed and hissed.

“I hope you know what you're doing, Jack.”

Careful to keep his face neutral Jack jerked his head towards the door.

“Can you drive an SUV?”

The Redjay laughed. “Captain, I can drive anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote that dialogue about Gordon Brown years ago and I still can't tell you what exactly my thought process was...
> 
> And yes, things are amping up at _both_ ends of the story!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And friendship with yourself  
>  —since after all you don't know who you are._   
>  **\- Adam Zagajewski, 'Impossible Friendships'**

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, The 51st Century**

The Time Agent not-really-but-previously called James and currently content to try out the name ‘Captain Jack’ was not exactly  _ enjoying  _ his current mission.

The crux of it was the mark herself. The Redjay. The one that got away… he didn’t even know  _ where  _ to begin with the bottled up emotions he had going on there. He’d failed missions before. Sure he had. But none as high-profile as her, and none quite as humiliating for the Agency. And so of course when he’d caught wind from certain shadier contacts of his that she was in the Peninsula and he’d been able to pick up the money trail, of  _ course  _ he’d had to make a move. His pride wasn’t the only thing on the line, and bringing her in would put a proverbial stripe or two on his shoulder and get him back in good with his superiors.

But then she’d gone and surprised him. He’d known taking her in wouldn’t be easy, but he’d expected… more, somehow. Obviously she’d been fighting tooth and nail to escape, but she was fighting  _ clean.  _ Never going for the kill, playing happy captive and letting herself be bought by a hot cup of coffee. Because he had no doubt at all that no matter how little she wanted to be there, she was  _ letting  _ it be easy for them. And the only clue he had was that she seemed to know him in the future, and was doing a very bad job of hiding it.

He’d worked it out in the car to the star-port. One thing was for sure, she was damn good at making the truth sound like a lie.  _ And probably the same in reverse, but she’s got you hooked anyway.  _ ‘You don’t know me yet, do you?’ The first thing she’d said to him, and probably the most honest. That ‘yet’ was nagging at the back of his mind. They were a Time Agent and a Time Lady, more temporally aware than a lot of people in the universe. He knew that the chances of their timelines marching perfectly were less likely than not… but there was something more to it.

Because she remembered the first time he’d caught her, and he didn’t. She remembered her time in Agency custody. That, alone, felt like enough reason for her to be more hostile. But that wasn’t  _ knowing.  _ That was an acquaintance at best. A handful of hours where, no doubt, he had not made a good first impression. And it was driving him crazy trying to figure it out, because just coming out and  _ asking  _ her seemed ridiculous, somehow. And the not-knowing was far from the only way she was starting to get under his skin.

_ I’m starting to enjoy her company. _

Coordinating with the freighter Captain had at least been a chance to clear his head; to get back to business. So he’d volunteered without even hesitating, making sure he had all his weapons on him and concealed before winding his way to the bridge. It had taken a little bit to convince the man to talk with him, but he’d eventually been able to coax a little more information out of him by asking about the wife whose photo was pinned to the helm. 

> _ “She’s an old ship,” said the Captain, gruffly, scratching his mandibles. “Named for the wife, you know.” _
> 
> _ The old Brancheerian had passed the controls off to someone else and invited the Time Agent to what he called his office. It was, in all honesty, a storage closet with star charts and a table and some hypervodka, but it was far from the grimiest place he’d been to. And it flew, and he wasn’t asking for much credits, truth be told.  _ No questions asked about the Redjay, either.  _ Which said a lot about the kind of thing they were used to freighting, which he and John in turn could conveniently  _ not  _ notice. _
> 
> _ “Not as quick as the luxury hyperjump vessels your lot’d usually charter, but she’ll get us there.” _
> 
> _ The Time Agent grinned charmingly. “She’s rustic.” He winked, sipping the hypervodka. “Myself, I happen to be a  _ fan _ of rustic.” _
> 
> _ “Groxshit,” responded the Captain, sharply. “I can tell your credits are low,” the Time Agent raised an eyebrow, “else you’d be taking that pretty girl of yours somewhere fancier.” _
> 
> _ “The suite’s fine,” said the Agent, not lying. He’d caught the tone, the Captain trying to get him to tell him their story. But he wasn’t that careless. _
> 
> _ No, the room was comfortable, and had obviously been done up with passengers in mind. A decent-sized bed, shower, view of space through a tiny window. Only thing it was missing was a kitchen, but he’d been assured they could take whatever from the mess hall and eat in their room. He’d visited escorts before with similar set-ups on similar cargo ships, and it didn’t matter how rusty the chassis was so long as the paying passenger (and customer) was happy and you didn’t all fall apart in the void.  _ And when you’re knocking about with someone, you tend not to notice the rocking of an old set of gravitational stabilizers. 
> 
> _ “‘Sides,” he continued, trying to get back on topic, “voyage's only gonna be what,” the Captain raised a questioning eyebrow, wondering what he was getting at, “eighteen hours? Twenty?” _

Four days. The Time Agent shook his head. They had to survive four days of not killing each other in their sleep, and with the way that John was behaving he was beginning to wonder if it was even possible.

_ Why do I care? John’s John. You know how he is.  _ And he wasn’t exactly a bastion of goodness himself. But he found himself hoping that they didn’t kill one another. He could bring the Redjay in dead and still get his credit, but he didn’t  _ want  _ to, he realised. Under his skin; she and her riddles were well and truly under his skin. And glancing at his hand, he’d even bartered the bottle of hypervodka off the Captain so that all  _ three  _ of them could share it.  _ Drinking with a criminal wanted in more galaxies than I can count…  _ Well. Who was judging?

His thoughts trailed off as he reached the start of the converted cargo bay, brow knitting into a frown as well-trained instincts kicked immediately in. Something wasn’t right. It was too quiet. He’d half expected the Redjay and John to be in the middle of a shouting match, but even if they  _ weren’t  _ there should have been  _ some  _ noise. As he rounded the corner, drawing his revolver, the door to their room was just slightly ajar. Had she overpowered John and made a break for it?

But then, if she had, why leave the door open? And where the hell did she think she could actually  _ go _ ? Except… the door was automatic, he remembered with a start. He’d keyed it to lock behind him when he’d left, but there was meant to be a safety mechanism to stop it closing on someone and losing them a limb. And sure enough as he eyes trailed down the crack of light - the sensor beeping like someone’s small, annoying dog - his gaze settled on what was blocking the sensor.

“ _ Fuck _ .”

With a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, the Time Agent holstered his gun and broke into a run, skidding to his knees as the door stopped its terrible racket and opened for him, no longer hovering inches from the outstretched arm that had been keeping it open. It took him a second to work out who the arm belonged to - the possibility that it was his partner or the Redjay somehow equally high - as he scrambled to remember to check for a pulse, rolling the figure onto their back.

It was John’s coat thrown on over their bare torso, vivid and red and catching his eye immediately, but the Redjay wearing it. Her skin was pale, lips turning blue, and her eyes wide and panicked, and as Jack put the back of his hand to her mouth he could tell that she was hardly breathing. 

Without thinking he swept her into his arms, placing her on the bed and snapping his fingers in front of her eyes in an attempt to get her attention. Her pupils twitched, but she didn’t move or protest or even make a sound beyond a thin whine forced through frozen lungs. Was she having some kind of reaction? An injury or illness that he didn’t know about? He only knew a little first aid and he reached for her throat to check for a pulse when a splash of colour on her bottom lip suddenly caught his eye. There was no time to be gentle.

He grabbed her unprotesting face, turning it to face him and running his thumb over her mouth. Faint bite marks, but he’d wager not her own teeth. Bruising, even though her skin seemed to be low on oxygen. And… he rubbed his finger and thumb together, suspicions confirmed.  _ Lip gloss. Bloody John Hart.. _

How long ago had he kissed her? How long had she been paralyzed? She’d managed to half dress herself - John’s coat, her own trousers, neither of them buttoned up - but she hadn’t even made it to the door. It was better than  _ some  _ people would fare with his partner’s particular poison of choice. But he could feel the terror in her paralyzed form, sense her mind unravelling with the sheer fury of helplessness. With a pang of some feeling he could scarcely understand he reached out for her mind with his own, reassuring her the only way that he could think how as he began to ransack John’s belongings for the antidote he knew he’d have to be carrying  _ somewhere _ .

« _ Redjay _ ...»

« _ Don’t  _ touch  _ me! _ » For all that her body was immobile, her mind was just as untrusting and caustic as before. More so, even. Lashing out like a trapped animal. Cuffed or bound she still had agency, some chance to escape, and no doubt that had kept her temper down. But now she was helpless and panicked. Delirious. The Time Agent sighed to himself, turning the room upside down and mentally cursing John’s name. « _ Not my Jack. Don’t touch me. _ »

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he snapped, growing tired of not understanding what the fuck she was on about.

They weren’t friends. He wasn’t anybody’s, least of all hers.  _ How can she possibly  _ trust  _ me?  _ She was a criminal, the one that got away, and he was a Time Agent. He had no memory of what he’d done to her before, but he doubted it had been a walk in the park. His methods weren’t. They could never be friends.  _ So why am I looking for the antidote when this would make my life so much easier? _

“I have an anti-toxin.” He upended a bag to no avail. “Somewhere!”

« _ Time Agents. _ »

“So you’ve said,” he grumbled. 

« _ All the same. Should’ve known. _ »

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” groaned the Time Agent, finally finding what he was looking for in a pile of discarded clothes in the bathroom.  _ John never travels without it - just in case. And if he did this and left it behind, maybe he was just… playing?  _ He could never tell, where his partner was concerned. Fuck, he  _ liked  _ the man and he was great in bed, but more so than any other Time Agent he had ever met, John Hart was a rule unto himself. Had he even been  _ trying  _ to kill her, or just getting his kicks? “I’m not his  _ keeper _ \- and I’m trying to save your life!”

« _ Not this way. _ »

« _ What? _ » he asked, beginning to get a headache from the prolonged telepathy. Especially with her mind as sluggish as it was.  _ Not  _ what  _ way? _

« _ Don’t die this way. Friends. In the future. Just getting used to it.  _ My  _ Jack… _ » The Time Agent tapped the syringe with one fingernail, hastily trying to get rid of the bubbles as it became clear the Redjay was swiftly losing what lucidity she had left. « _Don't want to die._ __ Bloody _ Agency. _ »

“Yeah, well,” he checked the syringe one last time before grabbing her limp wrist, searching for a vein, “this isn’t exactly my idea of a fun night either.” He forced a grin. “Much rather have a willing bed partner. Now, hold still!”

He could have been more careful, he was sure. But as soon as he found a vein in her elbow the Time Agent plunged the syringe into her arm without a second thought. Her whole body tensed - like every nerve had been yanked on at once, curling up like a pill bug - and then she went limp as a rag doll again, staring up at the roof with empty eyes. He swore, touching her neck, the syringe still in her arm, feeling for a pulse.  _ Is the anti-toxin fine for a Time Lord? _ Should he have checked? Well, the time for checking was long gone the second John had poisoned her. But he  _ really  _ hoped he hadn’t just dealt the killing blow.

The anti-toxin was supposed to be fast-acting, and Time Lords were resilient, by all accounts. He had to remind himself of that as he leaned over her, leaving just long enough to grab the flashlight he’d seen in the toolkit he’d taken off her. Shining a light into her eyes, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as her pupils dilated. He put the back of his hand to her mouth again, half-remembering first aid as he rolled her onto her side, opening her airways and supporting her head.  _ Do Time Lords breathe normally? With the two hearts?  _ He had no way of knowing that John’s lipgloss could’ve done to her physiology, and even  _ less  _ idea why he cared. But there was something about the way that she had gone quiet, even in his mind, that made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like seeing her… helpless, he realised, with a start.

Except she was his enemy. A criminal. His mark. Just the Redjay.

But she had talked to him. Listened to him. And then there were the words she’d just said, while out of her mind on John’s drugs.  _ Friends. In the future.  _ Was it the truth? Or just the only thing she could think of to say to make sure that he would protect her, again? God, he wanted to tear his hair out, bash his head against a wall. He wasn’t the sentimental type. She was just getting to him. And yet… was there anything  _ wrong  _ with that?

As her chest started to rise and fall again he sighed once again, sitting back against the headboard.  _ I should really cuff her before she wakes…  _ Instead, he reached over for the blanket, giving her some kind of modesty aside from the unbuttoned shirt which did little to cover her perk breasts. He brushed her hair out of her face, sticking out all which ways from the way she’d fallen when it was still presumably wet, and let his hand settle against hers, just… there. If she needed it… to keep her trust, that was all.

God only knew where John had got to. The cantina, probably, in search of a drink. He wasn’t going to be happy when he heard they were going to be in space for four days. Probably he’d be even  _ less  _ happy when he found out that the Redjay was alive and well. There would be words.  _ Stern  _ words. If he had to cuff them both to opposite ends of the room for the whole voyage to make sure they all made it to the Capitol in one piece, damn it he would. But they’d all three of them be miserable, and no doubt this was the beginning of a four day headache.

He brushed against her mind again, just to be certain that she really was out for the count. Nothing. Not even dreams. All he could sense was exhaustion, frustration, the tail end of panic.  _ Not surprising…  _ he smirked. It  _ was  _ kind of funny, with hindsight, in a way. That the great, much-wanted Redjay had let herself be seduced and drugged by a Time Agent, for all of her protests. The Time Agent laughed quietly and massaged the bridge of his nose with his hand, before planting his gun in his lap and glancing towards the door. Somehow, the hypervodka had survived. Maybe they’d laugh about this when they woke up. Or maybe the relatively ‘fun times’ they’d had getting as far as they had were over. He would have to play it by ear.

Sometimes he really,  _ really  _ hated his job. You didn’t make friends.  _ Couldn’t  _ make friends. But just for a second, before all of this, he’d almost let himself think that he’d found someone who could understand his restlessness. But not anymore. There seemed no way she’d ever trust him again.

And then she stirred, still asleep, and held on tight to his hand, and it felt like his heart was clamped in a vice.  _ Never say never… _

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he murmured under his breath, shaking his head. “S’kind of got a ring to it.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Every lover is a soldier.”_   
>  **― Ovid, Amores**

**CARDIFF, 2006**

“I thought you said you could drive anything!?”

“I didn't say I could drive it _well_!”

Roda had to admit there was a smug sort of satisfaction that came from the way that the Time Agent was clinging to his arm-rest as she turned corners down the winding streets of Cardiff. Eyes wide, he couldn’t seem to decide between watching her, and watching the _road._ She was honestly amazed that he'd let her drive; trusting her behind the wheel of a car – and more importantly, trusting her not to steal it – was a big change from not even trusting her outside of her prison cell for a shower and a change of clothes. She was certain she needed both, but if the Captain had noticed he was either too busy or too polite to say anything.

 _And if I do need a shower, that_ _’s_ his _fault, anyway._ Perhaps if she helped deal with the nestene she would get some time off her sentence for good behaviour.

Not, of course, that she knew exactly what her sentence was, or what she was even being held _for_. Just being an alien? For dismemberment? Experimentation? If that was the plan, they were taking their time about it, and being a little bit _too_ friendly, considering most of her prison mates appeared to be weevils. (Which she had only ever _read_ about before, and which turned out to be somehow even _less_ pleasant than she’d read.) From the fact that they’d managed to imprison her, she’d imagined that Torchwood was an agency to be reckoned with; not a group so small that a handful of them getting drunk could put half of the team on the sidelines. So perhaps they really _were_ their own people, and not just a branch of the Time Agency.

It made sense, but not in a way that she felt like admitting. Kept away from the Time War, not able to hold Wick ever again, locked underground for more than a week… she very much _wanted_ to cast her as the victim of some merciless, xenophobic entity that she could remain angry at. Instead, she’d been fed, treated for injuries - even if they _had_ knocked her out to do it - and offered pizza.

Their Captain had even allowed her into his mind, and guided her to the information that she wanted to see. And when she _had_ looked… he’d been telling the truth. He really _didn_ _’t_ remember killing her, but he did remember meeting her again. But it stood to reason, then, that it wasn't the only thing he was telling the truth about. Her nose wrinkled both in frustration and concentration. There was a time and a place to figure out what the fuck was going on between them. Why he seemed to be taking so much of an interest in her and not just processing her like it seemed they did any other alien 'threat' in their city. Which was something she was going to have to ask him about, she supposed.

All of the nestene consciousness' protein planets had been destroyed by the War. Some in the line of fire – one of many losses that she had grown to if not live with, do her best not to think about – while others had been targeted by both sides of combat. She had been there at the destruction of their home world. Polymos was seared into her memories almost as deeply as the brand had been. The loss of the nestene planet had not, at the time, hit her particularly hard but the wave of destruction that had recoiled on their squad had been one of the biggest losses they'd experienced in the war. She could still hear the TARDISes screaming...

Roda forced herself not to close her eyes against the memories, reminding herself that she was behind the wheel of a car. All she had to do was convince this Torchwood that she wasn't a threat and she'd be able to return to the War, awful though it was. The sooner it was over, the better.

“Next time, I'm driving!”

She could feel the Time Agent watching her, wary even despite his attempts at humour. He barked out directions and orders in a way that told her that the Captain's stripes were more than just decoration. The two steadily fell into a comfortable enough partnership as he communicated with his team back at the base and Roda focused on remembering which pedal did what.

It had been a while since she’d driven a car, and it had been both stolen, and an automatic. And not from this century. That, and it had been a very long time since she had had to consider what streets to take without just dematerializing in one spot and appearing in another. But it was a welcome reprieve from staring at the same slightly damp wall for most of the day and she had to admit, she was almost enjoying herself.

“So there's a next time, is there? Not just hacking me up for science after all this is done?”

The Time Agent opened his mouth as if to say something and then paused, his expression midway between a smirk and surprise. For a moment, Roda regretted saying anything herself but before she could take it back he simply half-shrugged and changed the subject.

“There,” he reached across Roda to point down a side street that it barely seemed as though the SUV would fit down, “down there.”

Roda’s back straightened, and her brow knitted into a frown of concentration. She felt herself slipping into soldier mode just as easily as she might have had _Wick_ been the one to give her a command, and for a moment felt a stab of pain. And then it passed, and she focused on the task ahead.

She didn’t know _when_ she had become a soldier; certainly it had never been inside her when she was young, before the war. Vigilante, yes, thief, yes, but soldier? Following orders, technically under Rassilon’s thumb once more, regimented and uniformed and one of a crowd that so often turned out to be the bad guys, no matter the situation? But somewhere in the years that the War had lasted it had happened, and now here she was. Trapped on Earth, and it felt like she was still in a war-zone.

“What’s the plan?”

The Captain stared. “I thought you said you knew how to kill them?!”

She narrowed her eyes. “I said I’d fought them before.”

If Roda swerved a little too hard and scratched one of the wing mirrors against the side of the stone buildings, or slammed on the breaks a little too suddenly, then she struggled to care. The SUV swerved to a stop in front of a row of orange cones and slanted police cars, blocking the entrance to what looked like some kind of outdoor shopping centre, with a large, gold-lettered archway over a gap not quite big enough for a large car to fit through. Roda's teeth clenched as she ripped off her seatbelt, rolling up the sleeves of her now too-large uniform. She patted the rudimentary sonic device tucked into her belt and wished, not for the first time, that he’d let her take a proper weapon. _Sonic is_ fine _against most things_ _… but a gun wouldn’t hurt._

She would have argued the point again – _surely the nestene would be easier to fight if I was_ armed? - but the sounds of gunfire and screaming from the cobbled streets in front of them shut her up. She had the only most basic experience with anything other than medieval Sol-3, and she was going to have to let the Time Agent take the lead. He’d said something about ‘the Hayes’; was that this place? It looked lived in, or at least as though it would have been busy were it not for the invading aliens. Pubs and takeaway restaurants lined the streets leading up to the complex. She could picture it swarming with people going about their daily lives, unaware of the universe around them. Instead, the cordon was clearly keeping people from going _in_ , but allowing a few terrified civilians to come screaming and running out.

“So how do we get in?”

Before she got an answer, the Time Agent had already power-walked away, ducking through the roadblock of police with only a cursory nod in their direction. Roda raised an eyebrow and jogged to catch up with him, murmuring 'excuse me' under her breath and trying to not make eye contact as he headed in the direction of the chaos. Law enforcement had always rubbed her the wrong way but as she fell into stride with the taller man it was obvious that he barely gave them a second thought.

She couldn't help but mutter under her breath. “Time Agent...”

“I told you,” he hissed, a hint of irritation breaking into his voice as he took the steps two at a time, “not any _more_.”

“Well once a Time Agent,” she snapped back half under her breath, eyeing his pistol jealously, “always a-”

“Jack? It’s Jack, right?”

Roda could tell that the Time Agent was impatient not so much from the look on his face or any kind of sound he made, but from the wave of mental exasperation that washed over her. She stifled a small smirk, doing her best not to make some sharp comment about being on the wrong side of law enforcement. _It won_ _’t get you anywhere except ten steps backwards after these few steps forward._ All the same, the man stopped, took a small breath and then spun on his heel to address the fluorescent yellow policeman who had been trying to get their attention.

“Andy.” He looked the blond man over, crossing his arms over his chest. His coat caught the wind in a way that Roda _supposed_ might have been almost heroic. “Gwen said you paged her.”

“S’definitely Torchwood bullshit,” agreed the man, in the same accent as the woman in the base - Gwen? _So it_ _’s local, then._ “Some kind of terrorist attack, is it?”

“Working on figuring that out. What can you tell me?”

Wondering what, exactly, a ‘page’ was, Roda listened intently while the two men had a short conversation about what everybody seemed to be running from. She resisted - with difficulty - the urge to interrupt and point out that while they were talking about what it _could_ be, the nestene were no doubt killing people. Fidgeting, she looked over their shoulder, trying to listen out for the tell-tale signs that things were going pear-shaped. The screaming seemed to have stopped, for now at least; and there was nobody else immediately trying to get around the cordon. Roda tried not to think about the reasons why the street could be quiet, but found herself unable to _not_. She itched with the urge to just vault past the men and deal with the Time Agent’s disapproval later on. To know what other exits the nestene might have, or to find out if there was anybody still left alive.

It had taken them less than half an hour to reach the scene of the invasion, and people had still died.

She knew, deep down, that the conversation could only be a handful of seconds. But having dealt with the aliens on Polymos, it seemed like a handful of seconds too many. Unable to stop herself, she finally cleared her throat.

“If you’re done flirting…” The policeman blushed from ear to ear. She raised an eyebrow. “Look, you’re the one with the pheromones.”

“What, are you jealous?” The policeman mouthed something under his breath, and the Time Agent sighed quietly. “Right. Time and place.”

“When your planet isn’t swarming with nestene.”

“Your planet…?” queried the newcomer, with obvious confusion. The Time Agent shot her a _look_ , and then grabbed her by the elbow.

Roda pulled her arm free, but followed the agent into the ‘Arcade’. It was quiet; too quiet. From what she’d picked up, the local police hadn’t been able to return fire, instead focusing on dealing with the panicked civilians. Which was all good and well, but if they _hadn_ _’t_ done anything… why was there no noise? No shooting? No skirmish? What were the nestene waiting for? Was it just that they had no targets, or were they waiting on commands? She still didn’t even understand what they were _doing_ here, so far from the War…

The agent walked quickly and purposefully, oblivious to her thoughts. It was all that Roda could do to keep up with his strides. She turned her head - about to ask him what his thoughts were - when he suddenly shouted and tackled her to the ground.

They hit the cobbles in a tangle of limbs and bruises as the agent threw an arm across her shoulders and pinned her to the ground. Roda fancied she smelled someone's hair sizzling, and wondered vaguely if it was her own, through the ache of the impact. _I didn_ _’t hear the guns powering up… Wick would have skinned me alive for not paying attention._ But footsteps were approaching them, and now wasn’t the time to fuss over what she’d missed. This was the fight they’d come looking for. Both their hearts raced as they lay there for a second or two and for a moment, Roda could have stayed there for longer. How long had it been since she'd been this close to another person...? The agent was shielding her completely, even if her leg was going numb underneath him. If he’d been a second too slow, then he could have been shot in the back. But Roda could feel his breathing on her neck, and he had barely broken a sweat. He had just - just _moved_ , thrown himself in front of live fire to protect a _prisoner._ Someone he had shot and killed, in the past, but no longer remembered. Maybe he really _wasn_ _’t_ the same man he’d been before.

Now wasn’t the time to think about his body against hers, or who he might really be. And he was asking her a question; she got the feeling it was the second time, too.

_Focus, Roda. Nestene._

“How many?” asked the Time Agent, keeping his head down and side-eying her.

They stayed completely still as Roda listened for gunshot. A Time Lord’s heightened senses came in handy, sometimes. No more came their way, at least at first; either they hadn't been specifically targeted, or the nestene thought they'd been hit. She could count the sound of at least four different guns. More screaming, now that the guns were firing again. Feet stampeding past them, almost trampling them. Nobody was returning fire, but nobody was shooting at the _shoppers_ , either. Not once they showed up.

Roda lowered her voice, whispering the answer as they remained prone.

“Five or six of them.”

“You said they're a hive mind?” he hissed back, hurriedly.

“Yes,” replied Roda, trying to see over his shoulder.

Her view, now that they were alone with the nestene and the bodies, was unimpeded. Around them was broken glass, the smell of burning and what looked to be small, now-abandoned little niche shops. But her tally had been more or less right. Squinting, Roda could count seven of them, skin – if it could be called that – white and featureless. They had no eyes to show where they were going or where they were shooting, and they were dressed not in armour but in what she imagined was probably twenty first century fashion. Tight, skinny jeans and patterned shirts, and long flapping coats that Roda would have coveted under better circumstances. Gwen, as the Time Agent had called her, had been right. The nestene really _did_ look like mannequins. _Why are they trying so hard to blend in, if they_ _’re just going to attack people_ anyway? _It doesn_ _’t make sense…_ She'd heard about how the consciousness could possess plastics, and that they often took humanoid forms, but this was a far cry from the cephalopod form that she'd grown to recognize. _How long have they been_ waiting _? Are they making use of what_ _’s here, instead of their own proteins?_

The invading army advanced down the street, heedless of her confusion. One stump of each of their wrists was held out like an artilleryman in live fire. There was no ‘at ease’, no weapons held pointing down at their sides. They might not have thought that they had any remaining enemies to target but they clearly had no intention to back down. _Where are they going? What woke them up? Is this_ them _, or just a recon force before the main event?_ Without running scans that she couldn't do without her TARDIS it was impossible to tell.

Roda quietly relayed what she could see to the Time Agent, all the while trying to carefully wriggle until she could reach the sonic that was trapped under one of her legs. She remembered that the Time Lord military had been told to use sonic weapons against them, not bullets. Ballistics ricocheted, moved too fast. But a sonic blast could destabilize their protein particles if she could just get off _one_ -!

“Shit!”

Another shot fired into the ground beside them and they both swore, rolling apart and to their feet on opposite sides of the blast mark. That the shot had missed them was sheer dumb luck.

The Captain grimaced, bracing the butt of his gun against his other hand as he targeted the closest of the nestene. Roda opened her mouth – ready to tell him that there was no chance in Skaro that his bullets would make any impact on the nestene at all – when he interrupted her.

He glanced over his shoulder once, his eyes bright, and honest, but focused into near coldness. “What’s the plan?”

 _Wick_ _…_ The eyes that looked at her – no, _into_ her – weren't the Time Agent’s, in that moment. Roda could forget the nestene, forget that they were in danger, forget that she was standing so close to a man who had killed her in the past and given the chance, might do so again... but she couldn't forget that kind of look. It wasn't even his; _how dare he wear it?_ He had the look of a Commander – _the_ Commander – and perhaps he didn't just wear those stripes for decoration.

It was the same way that Wick looked at her soldiers in the heat of a fight. Trust, command, expectation. Even if he was her enemy – and deep down, Roda was beginning to doubt that – could she really let him down knowing that somewhere in him there was something of Wick?

She shook her head and held out her modified sonic, targeting the nearest nestene with an explorative blast. (The – dubiously legal - modifications had been a headache to explain. Wick had only turned a blind eye because they had proved conveniently good at blowing the eyes off of unsuspecting tin cans at the stalk.) It jerked, twisting and twitching from the loss of its prosthetic arm, but continued to advance.

“…not that,” she replied, more calmly than she felt.

 _Damn it. What_ is _the plan? I have to give him_ something… _!_

She looked around. There had to be a powerhouse somewhere, something broadcasting a signal, maybe even controlling them. If sonic wasn’t taking them down, then they’d have to find it, and destroy it. Even if they could just _disable_ it, it would deal with these seven long enough to think of something better to do. In a best case scenario, that was; if this was more than just a recon force, she’d need her TARDIS to throw something together, and the kind of science mumbo-jumbo that wasn’t really her area of expertise. _Not impossible, though._ There were weapons back in her TARDIS that could target the nestene on a planetary scale, too, but they weren’t something she’d survive using. She would save them for the bastards that had taken Wick from her. But that wasn't the issue here. The problem that complicated all of her expectations.

She felt her chest tighten and it seemed as though her hearts had stopped. The Time Agent trusted her. That, if little else, was clear. The revelation was more of a shock than the nestene. And if she didn't trust him back, right now, people were going to die.

“Roda?”

Not taking her eyes off the enemy in front of them, Roda moved to stand side by side with Jack and raised her sonic once again.

“Right. Plan. Here’s what we need to do.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“Oh, yeah. You two. Just friends. No danger there.”_   
>  **\- Spike, "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer"**

**THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, The 51st Century**

The biggest surprise, decided Roda, was somehow  _ not  _ that she wasn’t dead.

She lay perfectly still on the bed, hand curled around the edge of a pillow where she half-remembered not-Jack’s hand being, one eye open just a crack. The Time Agent was gone, if he had even been there - she wasn’t sure what had been real, and what had been the poison talking - and she was alone in the bed. Unrestrained, too. But she could hear hushed voices from through a wall, and she was doing her best to  _ not  _ look awake, in case somebody noticed. It was hard to tell if they were talking in the bathroom or just outside the cargo hold, but by now she recognized the voices of the two men even through closed doors.

No, the strangest thing was that she had been left alone. And she was still too achy to feel much like moving - and there was nowhere, really, that she could have run to. Not unless the captain of the ship they were on would listen to a sob story. But the cuffs were nowhere to be seen and she was tucked into bed and she wasn’t  _ dead  _ and Jack the Time Agent… had saved her life. And seemed to be angrily defending it, from what she could make of the conversation.

“What the  _ hell  _ were you thinking?”

It was Jack alright. For a second, she could mistake it for  _ her  _ Jack. But it was furious Jack. Jack who had ripped Ianto away from her, when she’d first met him. Jack who argued with Owen about the right way to handle a corpse from the Rift. Jack who said that his word was law and  _ he  _ was in command, and if anybody wanted to question that then they were free to walk out the door. It wasn’t friendly, flirtatious, understanding Jack; and angry Jack was out because of  _ her. _

“It was just a kiss,” replied John, smartly.

But where Jack was fury, John was... laughter. Sarcasm. Utterly shameless. (Which, of course, her Jack was  _ too _ , but in a fundamentally different way.) Roda resisted the urge to scowl, gripping the bed sheets until her knuckles were as white as the linen. 

_ He could have  _ killed  _ me.  _ And for the first time since the War, she realised that she wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Wick was gone… but there were things to live for, still.

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“With the  _ lip gloss _ ?” snapped Jack.

Roda’s lips were dry, but she didn’t dare lick them. Who knew what traces of what might still be there? Toxic lip gloss… under any other circumstances, she might have been impressed.

“Only paralysed her a  _ little, _ ” responded John, petulantly. Roda could almost picture the look on his face; bottom lip sticking out, hands on his hips. Just a little pout, to gain his partner’s sympathy, and call off the rage. Raw sex appeal, and she’d fucking  _ fallen  _ for it.  _ What an idiot. _ “Figured you’d get back in time, it’d make our lives a lil’ easier.”

“She could have  _ died,  _ John.”

“Yeah, well,” now he would be scowling. Roda snorted quietly, and then froze as she heard the pneumatic door hiss open, the voices growing louder as if someone was checking in on her.

When she dared to peek she wasn’t surprised to see that John had eyes only for Jack. It was his partner who glanced at the bed, face wracked with concern before his expression quickly turned neutral and he looked away.

“What do  _ you  _ care?” continued John. Roda saw him try to grab Jack’s wrist, demanding his full attention again. “She’s just a pay cheque. Dead or alive, that’s how they want her.”

“If she’s  _ dead, _ ” growled Jack, grabbing John’s arm and stepping fiercely closer, “she can’t talk. She’s no good to anyone.”

“Right,” spat John, “and that’s  _ all  _ you want to do to her, is it. Talk to her hard and fast, all night long? Give me a  _ break.  _ This isn’t just about your memories anymore, is it?”

“I…” Jack’s voice trailed off, his shoulders losing some of their tension. Roda’s, in turn, tensed up in surprise. “Is  _ that  _ what this is? You seduced her ‘cause you were  _ jealous _ ?!”

John laughed again; loud and sharp and bitter as he pulled away from Jack and stormed into the room. He kicked off his shoes so hard that they thudded into the wall loud enough to wake the dead, and picked up a bottle of something off the table across the room as he rounded back on his partner with fire in his eyes.

“Really can’t see the way she’s got you wrapped around her fucking finger, can you  _ Jack _ ?” He took a swig from the bottle and slammed it down on the counter, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Roda laid as still as she could, trying not to flinch. “That’s the good stuff.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about..”

“Oh, don’t play dumb with  _ me, _ ” John lashed out, jabbing Jack in the chest hard enough that he stumbled. “ _ First _ you won’t let me shoot her when she could’ve stabbed us both in the back, then you let her inside your head. Jack this, Jack that, bla bla bla. You’re getting soft. I was just doing what was best for  _ us _ .”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” grumbled Jack, letting himself be prodded again, as he stood his ground. “I’m just doing my  _ job _ , same as you.”

“And how many of our marks do you make coffee for, and get all chummy-chummy with? All of them? Just the most dangerous? The hot ones” John’s voice was acidic, the jealousy dripping off him in buckets. Roda would have rolled her eyes if she could. Was this  _ really  _ how the Time Agency was, on the inside? Argumentative, loose cannons with even more issues than  _ she  _ had? Roda was almost amazed they’d managed to capture her not once, but twice. “Just a select few? Just  _ her _ ?”

“At least I kept my hands off her,” Jack retorted. “Funny idea of ‘doing’ your job -  _ you’re  _ the one that came onto her.”

“‘Cause I reckon she’d be a good shag,” protested John, “and ‘cause she’s been  _ pissing me off _ since the drive. That’s  _ hot _ , but I don’t wanna take it out to dinner. Just get it to shut up for a bit.” Jack opened his mouth to say anything, but John raised his hand and turned away. “Whatever. No lip gloss, no killing. Just don’t come crying to me when you turn your back on her and she shoots you.”

“If it happens,” responded Jack, clearly giving up the fight, “I’ll  _ deal  _ with it.”

“Fine.” John sniffed. “In your back be it! Besides.” Roda noticed a second too late as John looked her dead in the eye, lips curling into a smirk. “Your new best friend’s been listening to us ‘least as long as the door’s been open.”

The expression on Jack’s face as he spun around and stared at her - while Roda did a very bad job of making as if she hadn’t just been caught in the act - said a thousand things. Exhaustion. Frustration. Betrayal. And… relief? Roda groaned, stretched her muscles and gingerly stood up as he crossed the room, looming over her. It was hard to remember which Jack she was dealing with now. The one who had tortured her, the one who had captured her, or the one that took care of his team. All three? Another Jack?

John leaned against the wall, lip stuck out and his eyes somehow just as sultry, and pretended to ignore them.

“You’re awake.” A smile flashed across Jack’s face for a moment, before he crossed his arms. “How long?”

“How long was I out for?” responded Roda, not answering the question. “I think you owe me  _ that  _ much after I almost died.” Realizing that she was being snippy and defensive with the wrong person, Roda sighed and closed her eyes again, and muttered. “Sorry. Rough night.”

Jack managed a dark laugh. “Yeah. Took me years to work up a resistance to that stuff. It’s not much fun.”

Roda opened her eyes to  _ stare _ . “On… on  _ purpose _ ?” She felt like she’d been beaten to death with a lemon. Or a brick.  _ There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, probably.  _ “Seriously?”

“Only when he’s naughty,” commented John from across the room, drawling. “Shit’s expensive.”

“And here I thought you didn’t want to buy me dinner…”

For a second John’s jaw dropped, and Roda mentally returned the tally to 1-1 with a tired smirk. And then as she found the energy to sit up properly and bunch the duvets over what remained of her modesty, she saw his expression change into one that was almost genuine amusement. Jack saw it too, and Roda heard him muttering ‘here we go…’ as John swiftly sat down on the other side of the bed, completely invading Roda’s personal space before Jack could stop him. She managed not to give him the satisfaction of flinching, and then he held out his bottle.

“...you must be joking.”

“I’d never poison the hypervodka, love.” He took a swig to make his point. “If you don’t  _ want  _ the peace offering, all the more for me.”

Roda jerked up, dropping the sheets as she snatched the bottle away from his lips, even as a voice at the back of her mind said  _ this is probably a bad time for a drink. _

“You - I will  _ fucking _ -!”

Jack took the bottle out of her hands before she either drank it, or smashed it over John’s head.

“Temper temper, Sweetcheeks.”

“Don’t you  _ dare, _ ” she snarled, practically nose to nose with the Time Agent as she absently felt Jack place a warning hand on her arm, “‘Sweetcheeks’ me after leaving me all hot and-!”

She snapped her mouth shut, going red in an instant as she saw John’s grin well and truly reach his eyes. Her eyes went wide, and if she could have swallowed the words again, she would. But before she had a chance to try and backtrack or improvise, she felt Jack’s hand tighten imperceptibly on her arm.

“Wait. Wait.” He let go of her arm, snaking one of his around her chest with obvious amusement breaking through the stress. “Back up a little.” Jack turned Roda to face him, putting his hand under her chin in a way that made her hearts jump in her chest.  _ Great. Teenage hormones all over again, apparently. I blame almost dying.  _ “What’s all this about ‘hot and bothered’?” He raised an eyebrow, and Roda’s blush spread even further despite her irritation. 

_ Fine. In for a penny, and all that.  _

John peered over her shoulder, right up in her personal space again, and Roda became very aware that she was pinned between the two of them.

“Why  _ else  _ do you think we were snogging in the shower?”

Roda half turned her head to eye John, raising an eyebrow.

“If you’re not going to do anything about it,” she said, saltily, watching his smirk twitch for a second, “the  _ least _ you can do is shut up and let me deal with this headache in peace and quiet.”

“Well,” it wasn’t John who responded first, but Jack. “If it’s a  _ headache  _ cure you want,” he chuckled, pulling her closer against him (Roda thanked her stars that she had a relatively quick recovery time, because the last thing she wanted to do was faint in his arms right this second; she would never live it down), “then let the  _ Captain _ work his magic.”

It was, Roda knew, a very, fundamentally, terrible idea. She’d known that the second it had seemed as though things were going the way that they were. But when Jack pressed his lips against hers and she found her hand sliding up his thigh, it was hard to care. A little voice reminded her just where letting herself be seduced by a Time Agent had gotten her last time; earlier that same  _ day. _ The whole almost dying thing. But she told that little voice to shut up, because this was almost Jack, and if she couldn’t live a little after the day she’d been having, then when  _ could  _ she live? And it wouldn’t be the first time that she’d celebrated almost dying this way, anyway...

The bedsprings creaked as John pressed up against her back, his fingers lacing with Jack’s hand as he once again buried his face in Roda’s neck, mouthing at the still faintly bruised skin. He pushed her hair out of the way, gripping it just a little too tightly, as if to remind her where they stood. Pulling her hair as he moved her where he wanted her, all while keeping Jack in his sights.

Roda hissed, biting Jack’s lip by mistake, but she would have been lying if she said a little part of her didn’t enjoy the rough with the gentle. Jack’s eyes flashed with something - surprise? Delight? Roda didn’t have a chance to notice as he pushed back against her until it felt like no part of her body wasn’t up against one of the Time Agents’.

Forget handcuffs. This was bondage she could get behind. Or in front of. Between. Doing her best to ignore the traces of dizziness she still had, she explored a younger Jack with her hands while John’s found her breasts. Her back was to a man who would happily kill her, and she  _ knew  _ that… but there was a thrill there, too. But he was hot, and he knew exactly what to do to get her wound up. And despite knowing that it  _ wasn’t  _ her Jack who was kissing her, Roda could still let down her guard knowing that someone was watching John when she couldn’t. Someone that, damn it, she couldn’t help but trust. Because the way she was sandwiched and the way John was watched, Jack was  _ very  _ much the man in charge of where the night ended.

Just this once. Life was made for bad ideas. Why not enjoy them every once in a while?

***

They fell apart - what seemed like hours later - in a tangle of sweat-soaked limbs and messed up sheets, pleasantly  _ exhausted. _

Roda made to roll off of Jack (there had to be somewhere on the bed that she’d fit, even if it wasn’t exactly made for three) but as she did so he pulled her against his side, reluctant to let go. Pressed tight against him Roda gave a contented sigh and closed her eyes, barely even flinching when John grabbed her arse and then nuzzled into her back. The blond yawned and held on possessively, and pretty soon Roda felt his chest move with faint snores.  _ Apparently we’re ‘good’ then, I guess,  _ she thought to herself. All the same she inched out of his tight grip a little, stretching her neck. Jack was one thing; John, she had no feelings but lust towards.

Jack - not her Jack, of course not her Jack, but a very  _ fun  _ Jack - chuckled, his breath on her cheek. The last however long had been… chaotic. Hot. Distracting. The two men had taken  _ very  _ good care of her; one rough, the other teasing, neither allowing her a moment to think about anything other than touch. It wasn’t like the sex she and Jack had had before; this was casual. Reckless. No expectations. She didn’t regret it - far from it. Casual was… good. Took your mind off things you didn’t need to always think about. Just what you needed to be prescribed, sometimes…

But having sex with someone you were more accustomed to making love to was still… strange.

And to her surprise, she realised that she wasn’t just missing her freedom; not being a prisoner, not having to watch her back, being able to go where she wanted and when she wanted. She was missing her time, too.  _ Her time. _ Torchwood. Stability. Direction. Friendships. All of the things she’d convinced herself, since her exile, that she didn’t want or need. But she’d begun to rebuild a life in twenty first century Sol-3. Now, more than before, she realised she had to escape so that she could  _ return.  _ And the thought was terrifying, making her bury her face in Jack’s chest.

Just when - in only a few short months - had working for an organization who’d thrown her in a prison cell the day they’d met become something almost like  _ home _ ? It should have felt like Stockholm Syndrome. But with Gallifrey gone and people who cared if she lived or died, it… wasn’t. Had she been taking that for granted?

Her mind still reeling and her breath still slowing down, Roda opened an eye to glance at Jack, and lowered her voice into a whisper.  _ Something else. Ask about something -  _ anything  _ \- else. _

“So,” she began, as John’s sleeping hands  _ still  _ seemed to wander, “your partner…?”

“Not just business,” admitted Jack, with a half shrug. “There was a time loop, lots of pent up emotions. S’complicated.”

“I figured. But I meant the whole…”

Getting the picture, Jack winced apologetically. “Possessive. Yeah.”

“ _ Murderously  _ possessive.”

“Well,” added Jack, thoughtfully, “fresh out of rehab. Bit messed up. Kinda have to cut him some slack,” he said, weakly, “I mean, he still gets the job done, and he’s a good shag.”

_ He is.  _ Pushing the thought aside, though, Roda glanced at the discarded hypervodka. “Drink?”

Jack shook his head. “Nah. Sex.”

Roda wanted very much to assume that he was joking. But given the century, and everything she’d seen about John so far… well it wasn’t exactly unbelievable.  _ Sex rehab… what next? Well. He clearly didn’t lose any  _ skills,  _ anyway.  _ She dragged her hand down her face, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Fair enough…”

“No sex rehab back where you come from?”

Roda had to stifle a laugh. “No, not exactly.” The Looms, not to mention Gallifrey’s approach to recreational sex - at least, when she’d been young and the Curse was fresh - was too complicated to get into, she decided. Especially as pillow talk.

“Huh. Guess we’ve got you Time Lords beat on progressive.”

Roda rolled her eyes, and glanced at the ceiling for a moment.  _ You don’t even know it... _

“... I don’t suppose this changes anything?” Jack raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. “Sorry for the poison, thanks for the sex, now we’re even, let’s part ways at the Capitol and forgot the bounty and the Time Agency and the whole being arrested thing?” His look was all the answer Roda needed, as she buried her head under his chin and tried to avoid his eyes.  _ What did you expect, Roda?  _ “Thought not.”

“It’s nothing-”

“Personal?” interrupted Roda, quietly. “No. It is. I know.”

Jack - who had been stroking her hair absentmindedly, fell thoughtfully still. Roda bit her lip, cursing herself for saying too much.  _ How much is too much? How much can I mess up the timeline, if I’m not careful?  _ She shut her mouth, wishing that she hadn’t said anything, or ruined the moment, or given clues that she really shouldn’t have given. And at first, Jack was equally quiet. It dragged out and Roda wondered if pretending to fall asleep would be the easiest - if more rude - solution. And then Jack found his words.

“You’re hiding something. You keep almost saying it…” he lowered his voice, mouth to her ear, so she almost had to strain to hear him. “You  _ did  _ say it,” Roda’s eyes went wide in shock. “When you were delirious.”

“It’s nothing.”

Roda made to roll away - find somewhere else to sleep, or actually - but Jack grabbed hold of her wrist before she could straighten up. His expression was serious, but not angry. Confused?

“Who am I, to you?”

Memories flashed through Roda’s mind. Pain, fear, death, anger, thrill, friendship. Too many things to say, and none of them safe. But she had to say  _ something,  _ especially if she’d already let something slip. But… what?

“In the future,” she spoke carefully, picking her words as she went, “you’re going to meet someone.” Beautiful Welsh vowels came to her like the smell of fresh coffee, giving her a second wind. She wondered, sometimes, if Ianto knew he was the real backbone of Torchwood. “Someone wonderful. A good man.” Jack narrowed his eyes, clearly picking up that she was changing the topic, but too curious to interrupt. “And he’s going to make you happy -  _ actually  _ happy,” she added, before he could argue. She smirked. “Make an honest man of you.”

“ _ You’re  _ one to talk.”

“Look,” she said, moving so that she could jab him in the ribs. “ _ You  _ asked. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Right.” Jack’s voice - Roda noticed, with a twinge of pain - was disbelieving, bordering on suspicious and yet hopeful.  _ One day he’ll realise people love him for who he is, and not  _ what. “And when, exactly, am I going to meet this angel in shining armour?”

Roda snorted. “C’mon. What kind of monster skips to the end of the book?”

“Redjay…”

“...I’m tired,” she said, as firmly as she could manage. And she  _ was _ . But she’d already said too much, and if she didn’t put her foot down  _ now _ , then she knew she would say something she couldn’t take back. Something that would change their timeline. “And your partner nearly killed me.” Jack didn’t stop her from pulling her wrist out of his hold. “Let me have my secrets.”

He gave her a dark look. “They’re  _ my  _ secrets.”

“...I know.” Roda gave him a weary look, and forced herself to think of him not as the friend or the lover or the confidante. Here, and now, she had to be the criminal. “Don’t you remember? I’m just a criminal."

Jack wasn’t stupid enough not to read between the lines. With a sigh he rolled onto his back, turning his glare on the ceiling. “Right. And I’m just a Time Agent.”

“You got it.”

“So now that you’ve set the record straight,” said Jack, sharply, rolling onto his other side, “just be sure to let me know next time you feel like pulling that ‘my Jack’ stuff. A guy might start to get hopeful, or something.”

The closeness of the evening began to slip away from her as Roda pinched the bridge of her nose and cursed every single time she had ever travelled through time; every single mistake that had led to this stupid, ridiculous moment that felt like she’d stabbed one of her only friends in the back. It had to be like this. She couldn’t get attached.  _ You  _ idiot  _ Rodageitmososa. Why did you have to go and let yourself get  _ attached _?  _ Right now he was a Time Agent and she was a Time Lord. He was - ostensibly - the law and she was wanted across the universe. There was no common ground and like the arrogant Gallifreyan she was, she’d stuck her foot in it and tried to have her cake and eat it as well.

All she’d had to say was… well,  _ what _ ? Nothing at all, this time. All she’d had to do was keep her mouth shut or say something flirtatious. All she’d had to do was remember the role she was supposed to be playing - who the universe had always told her she was. A danger. Wrong. A mistake. And yet every time she got used to it she made a mess of it and wanted what she couldn’t have.

And could she even have Jack? The Jack, of her time? Or would she just turn around and hurt  _ that  _ Jack, too? Rassilon, it hurt her head and her hearts all at once and there was nothing that she could say to take it back. She reached out for him, fingers curled, wanting to apologise and knowing that she  _ couldn’t _ . Not yet.

_ And here I thought I’d almost found a home. _

_...fuck it. _

Swallowing her feelings and all common sense and every Law of Time she had ever been taught and a thousand other things, Roda locked her emotions away at the back of her mind and reminded herself that there was no one to hold her accountable for messing with things. Not since Gallifrey had gone, and not in a long time. Grabbing Jack by the shoulder she forced him back onto his back - ignoring his start of surprise - and straddled his hips, pressing her mouth hungrily, needily, selfishly against his as she let her fingertips graze his temples. By some miracle John kept on snoring obliviously as Roda closed her eyes and opened her mind.

It was another terrible idea but she was full of them, and she was done behaving herself if it meant that she had to hurt people. She would deal with the consequences later, she decided. For once, she was going to enjoy the cake. And if that meant overloading Jack’s mind with flashes of things he couldn’t know - of the way people cared for him, of how much  _ better  _ than this he was, of all of the things that he would be to her, one day - then so be it.

Not that he was pushing her out of his mind, anyway. In one way or another he  _ wanted  _ this, and he was letting her in. As she kissed him hard, her emotions laid bare, he rolled them both over so that he was pinning her to the bed and holding onto her tight. Roda’s breath hitched and he chuckled, though it seemed a thousand miles away, and she rested her forehead against his as they found common ground with a different kind of intimacy to what had happened earlier that night. But if Jack wanted secrets then he could have them. _'Who am I, to you?'_ That's what he'd asked, after all. Better to give him a glimpse of the future and maybe steer him towards it than leave him bitter and always wondering what was missing. And who knew? Maybe this was the moment that imprinted on him that he deserved to have and  _ be  _ better.

_ Hope.  _ It was a Skaro of a drug, and so was Jack. And it was funny, really; how he wanted more and all she wanted was to not let go of what she had, and it was somehow both the same thing.

There was no possible way to know how many details he’d hold onto in the morning, and how much of it would just be a vague, forgotten dream.  _ Most of it,  _ she reasoned, well aware that there was only so much that a human mind could take at once, no matter how well trained their telepathy was. He would probably remember it as whatever she had said when she was hallucinating, or a pleasant dream after a pleasant fuck, or wishful thinking; if he remembered the details at all. Right now all she was getting from him was that he wanted more and that she had it to give, even if it was stupid and reckless. But she couldn’t bring herself to let even the  _ Time Agent  _ Jack hate her. Not anymore. She could only delude herself so far.

When they fell apart again and Jack was too exhausted to stay awake and Roda was too wound up to sleep she finally went for that shower in peace, locking the door behind her, and realised that there was a lot she’d been deluding herself about. The question was how much of it she was willing to admit to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been both a disaster and a delight. Because when I first wrote it so many years ago, it was pretty much PWP. And now it's turned into a character study and a well of deeply flawed people having good and bad emotions and struggling to deal with them. With a side-order of smut. For example, this chapter went _completely_ off script and now I'm gonna have to deal with that.
> 
> I just hope it works?


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